


Oxidation

by abbykate



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Artist AU, Artists, Dream Sex, Dreams, Drug Abuse, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Modern Art, Oil Painting, Painting, Sherlock is a painter, lots of cigarettes, painter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 12:26:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1266517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykate/pseuds/abbykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>as oil paintings dry, the process is not evaporation as there is no water in the paint to disappear; instead, the oils in the paint are oxidised causing them to harden over years in a process that never really stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】氧化反应/Oxidation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476900) by [Adeline1895](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adeline1895/pseuds/Adeline1895)



*

_Sherlock Holmes: the Man Behind the Marvel_

 

In the spring of 2010, queues snaked round the block and back again, people of all ages, races, and classes standing for hours, for weeks, for one reason: the PAINTINGS II exhibition of oil artist phenomenon Sherlock Holmes. I myself queued no less than three times for the chance to spend a few hours gaping along with the masses at Holmes’ fourteen pieces, oil paintings so lifelike (“I swear I saw the one of Her Majesty breathe,” exclaims one fan), so full of “intended vitality” as Holmes himself put it in an previous interview, that one feels as though one is not only in the actual presence of whomever Holmes has meticulously painted, but that one is also in the presence of “a skill-level not seen,” expounds Irene Adler (the curator for Holmes’ newest show at the National Portrait Gallery), “since the age of [Thomas] Lawrence _(1769-1830)_ or perhaps even a Renaissance talent as towering as Velázquez _(1599-1660)_ with attention to subtlety and detail to rival even da Vinci. He is the da Vinci for the modern age. Without question. Or exception.”

 

“That’s ludicrous,” Holmes states without a hint of irony when read the previous quote, “I have no interest in sculpting horses or using bronze, for that matter.” With his trademark inkblot waves and cerulean eyes, to be sat across from Holmes feels markedly similar to being sat across from one of his pieces. Or perhaps one’s upper-crust, extremely distant but very meticulous probation officer. Holmes speaks only when spoken to, usually accenting a full-stop by tapping an unfiltered cigarette of his personal blend into an impressively normal ashtray astride an immaculately-suited knee. He wears no visible jewellery, statement-making footwear (plain black Yves St Laurent’s) or even contact lenses. In an era where artists in jeans covered with scarves and competing tattoos with unwashed hair and the lingering scent of cannabis are the _ordre du jour_ , Holmes cuts a stark and stunning contrast.

 

Famous for spending only scarce periods of time with his clients and subjects (as “not all clients become subjects and not all subjects are necessarily clients”), Holmes doesn’t waste a moment, sometimes only meeting with a person once for no more than five minutes. “I paint only what I observe.” When pressed on the seeming impossibility of creating such complete pieces with only moments of time with each subject, Holmes suggests “perhaps it _is_ impossible for some idiotic, inattentive someone who is not me. However, I am me and therefore your point is baseless.” He does not care to comment on his competition (the block-busting launch of James Moriarty’s _Tasteless_ at the Tate Modern, for example) or on the incident in 2008 when rumours of cocaine reached a fever pitch following his abysmal showing at the Serpentine Gallery where Holmes has only recently been welcomed back.

 

Holmes’ new show, the simply titled PAINTINGS III, opens 1 September at the National Portrait Gallery _(020 7306 0055 to book)_.

_K. Reilly, The Guardian_

* * *

 

“Never again means never again,” Sherlock growls at himself in the mirror over the sink. His curls are insane in the humidity while his fingers work turpentine from the bristles of each brush in short, practised moves until the white sable hair is dry again. “Do you hear me? Never. Again. No matter what they promise you.”

He can still hear the laughter from the canvas behind him (or the pieces of it that are left anyway) and it makes his skin crawl as the shame starts to congeal just below the surface. A show in September. Who is he fucking kidding?

He has painted everyone, _everyone_ of interest and if someone is actually interesting, they’re already dead. And that never works, working from old photographs. They all end up awkward amalgamations with the right eyes but entirely wrong nose and the right wrists with the completely wrong fingers. _Or worse,_ his _fingers…when he can be bothered to show up to model, the self-important fuck._

There is nothing left for him here. Nothing in the whole of London or England or the world. And especially nothing at all with which to facilitate an entire show. In September. At the Portrait Gallery.

Sherlock makes his way to the couch and lies on his back tenting his fingers under his nose. He closes his eyes. This is what it must feel like: being normal. So empty and restrictive and so very, very _hateful_. Diving deep into himself, Sherlock battens down the hatches on the inner-most chambers. The despair looms, insidious and insatiable. “The east wind is coming, Sherlock,” he hears as if Mycroft was hissing it into his ear right now. “It’s coming to _get you_!”

Before the darkness can pounce, the phone on his chest vibrates with a new email. He opens his eyes and thumbs it unlocked. “Dear Mister Sherlock Holmes,” he reads in a fast mumble. “My name is Harriet Watson and I request a meeting with you at a time of your choosing to discuss an unusual commission…”

 

* * *

 

“Why me?”

His cavernous voice fills the unexpectedly haphazard sitting room perfectly. Objective: intimately intimidate. It’s so small, this simple place; its knick-knacks and wallpaper had entertained people (and bank accounts) that she could never dream of let alone know and the furniture doesn’t even match. And where are the oils? Not one painting hanging, but there’s a bovine skull complete with headphones.

Odd.

As for the man himself, he’s close to the small picture in the magazine, but he’s taller than she had imagined him with narrower hips and a short torso that bends almost concave when he takes a drag from his third cigarette. And he’s skinny, so skinny, with legs for days that taper into long feet, one of which dangles toward her bouncing slightly.

He is everything she is not; pristine and untouchable, like a sculpture. Impervious.

Still, she thinks, he _is_ beautiful if you go for that sort of ethereal, inhuman thing. John always had done.

“You’re the only one who can, Mr Holmes,” she replies keeping her voice as calm and direct as his. “Plus, I’m told you enjoy a challenge.” His angled eyes rake over her from under dark eyelashes. She tries not to flinch choosing instead to brush her palms down her trousers as non-chalantly as possible. They might be sweating. _Christ, I need a drink or several -- I know John, I know._

“I’m not sure with whom you’ve been speaking, Ms Watson,” he breathes, “ and though your attempt at flattery, albeit feeble, is usually advisable, I can assure you in this case that painting a portrait from nothing more than dated photographs will yield a disappointing result for all involved.” Smoke curls from his feminine mouth twisting elegantly towards the ceiling. “Good day. Mrs Hudson will show you out.”

In one swift move, he grinds out what’s left of his cigarette, stands and holds his hand out flat, his clean knobby fingers gesturing towards the exit. They look like they are made of the same wood as the handles of his brushes.

“I’m afraid I won’t take no for an answer,” Harry counters. Her shoulders square, pressing deeper into the worn fabric of the wingback chair. She feels safer there, stronger. “I find it interesting, Mr Holmes, that you’re so reluctant to try something new. Didn’t have you pegged as the unadventurous type. And it’s Harry, please.”

“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, _Ms Watson_ ,” he says while thrusting the full weight of his attention into her. She leans into it stone-faced and tightened her lips. John would have laughed at her like he always did when she was defiant. Always, _always,_ John always laughed right before he picked her up and literally threw her in whichever direction he deemed fit.

“My brother was perfect. _Is_ perfect. Was perfect,” she corrects herself. “And I know you probably hear things like that a lot, but in this case, it’s the truth. He protected his patients when he was here. He protected his team when he was there. He protected me. And not just when he was in the stupid uniforms, but that was the thing about John -- he didn’t need a uniform. He was born to be a soldier. And he was born to be a doctor. He was friendly and warm and smart and safe. You felt like you had a secret lion next to you when he was with you. He wasn’t aggressive, but come after something he loved? He’d tear your fucking arm off without a thought.” She clears her throat. He watches her. He's listening. _John, I’m trying. I’m trying._

“And he always forgave me. And he shouldn’t have. And he shouldn’t have gone the way he did. People need to know, Mr Holmes. They need to know my brother and what he did and how he did it and there’s no other way to tell them than through you. I can’t go to Moriarty or Moran or any of the others. _You_ were his favourite, so I can’t even threaten to go to them. _I_ can’t write it and there aren’t enough songs, so it’s got to be this. You. And John deserves it. He deserves everything. So please, reconsider. Please. I owe it to him. I owe it to John and I can’t get it done without you.”

A sniffle rings out from behind her chair. Harry snaps her head to the side to see Mrs Hudson, the paper-skinned assistant that had led her to Unit B of 221 Baker Street, dabbing at her eyes and failing to compose herself on the landing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says throwing her hands up and turning back toward the stairs.

The diamond gaze of Sherlock Holmes shifts minutely and then swishes back to Harry. He surveys her with neutral exactitude that feels like scalpels. Harry opens her mouth, a new plea forming on her tongue.

“He was older than you but not by much,” he cuts her off. “No more than two years apart, more likely eighteen months, _more_ likely fourteen months. You had the same exact parentage?” He looms over her now, his fingers tent in front of his lips just beneath his nose. She can feel him in the roots of her hair.

She nods slowly. Her breath is as shallow as his is deep. His eyes seem wider. “Come back tomorrow,” he says. “Mrs Hudson will arrange the time,” he turns away, pulling a phone from the inner-pocket of his blazer, “and the payment.”

“So you’ll do it?” Harry doesn’t smile and Holmes doesn’t turn. His thumbs slide across the bright screen.

“Come back tomorrow.”

Before she can respond or get another look into his eyes (just to make sure he’s serious because her speech had actually worked, _what the fuck?_ ), Mrs Hudson appears at her elbow to tow her toward the door. Harry watches him move to the tall sitting room window. London’s weak sunlight hollows his features even further. He looks, extraordinarily, more human this way than he looked during their entire encounter. He pockets the phone again only to materialise another cigarette like a magician. His face never budges from the window.

“Come along, dear,” Mrs Hudson says in her sweet, motherly voice. They descend the stairs slowly, the creaks their feet arouse from the wood singing harmony. “Now, Sherlock isn’t exactly what you’d call a morning person, so what time do you suggest?”

 

* * *

 

_Assistance required._

_Tonight, 2030._

_Reservation at our usual._

_SH_

 

Whatever for?

_Don’t ask questions._

_It’s vulgar._

Tonight, then.

You’re buying.

_Of course._

**# # # #**

“I find it so spectacular that she accused you of being unadventurous!” Victor laughs his words into the hairline above Sherlock’s left ear.

The hallway is clear; Mrs Hudson knows the routine by now and stays away. Victor crowds him against the wall of the stairwell, rum and hot breath and his usual tang all assaulting Sherlock’s senses like a swarm of particularly well-meaning gnats.

His hands snake beneath Sherlock’s blazer and Sherlock growls against his neck. In these moments, Sherlock prays to a god he knows isn’t there for three more inches -- just three -- then he could overtake this man like he wants to, like he’s tried to since uni, choke him on adrenaline and arousal, short-circuit and overwhelm _him_ for fucking once.

“Really, Sherlock? _You_?” Victor’s lips brush the shell of his ear now, blood pounding through it to meet them. Sharply, Sherlock pulls away and balls his fists into Victor’s waistcoat.

“Stop talking.” He smashes their lips together, Victor’s stubble scratching at his pores in the way he loves most. Victor’s lips are better when they’re silent. Always were. He knows too much, this chap. But he kisses like Sherlock is made of sweet cream or beurre blanc or like all the oxygen in the universe is stored only in the folds of Sherlock’s lungs.

Sherlock shoves his knee against his groin ripping an inelegant groan from Victor’s throat. Victor’s hips thrust with their breath, his cock dragging against Sherlock’s slender thigh. Hands slide over silk around Sherlock’s ribcage, squeezing him closer _oh god oh yes that’s it oh god I want oh god I want to but I can’t no but I want no I want your shoulder bite it no your left shoulder yes right there right there I want to I want to I have to I have to it’s imperative_

“Ouch!” Victor wrenches his mouth away. “What the fuck?”

Sherlock opens his eyes to find his thumb gouging a hole into the front of Victor’s shoulder while his other fingers grip the top of it just as tightly. When he releases his hand, it throbs. He holds it still, fingers fanned out in the air, colour returning to the knuckles. Victor’s eyebrows descend, waiting. “I...” Sherlock tries. “I honestly don’t know. I...”

Victor rubs at his shoulder with his opposite hand and scoffs “Is it unlocked?” He smiles ruefully, mouth full of lovely little teeth, and heads up the stairs unbuttoning his shirt as he climbs.

Victor makes Sherlock’s bed feel smaller than it is with his thoroughbred legs and endless arms. But when Victor’s hands land on Sherlock’s waist to hold him in place in his lap, Sherlock finally allows his mind to start shrinking their bodies back to human-size, to this divine equation of flesh on flesh.

He strokes Victor’s face, fingertips playing along his jaw bone on either side. Victor’s skin still feels like it did when they were twenty, smooth and even despite the abuse of cigarettes and London life.

“How do you want it?” Victor asks slowly. His eyes are so blue, _light blue today sometimes they’re greener but oh no, they’re light light blue that’s easy enough to create better than life given the right tools start wide pupils down fathoms down 755 noir d’ivorie ebony black with 116 blanc de titane, titanium white not too much not too much better, better they’re shining read the light source and out into iris he wants it the iris 365 bleu clair he wants me just look one one six titanium white titanium white titanium white titanium white his pulse titanium white blanc blanc blank_

“Shhhh,” says Victor petting a hand down Sherlock’s flank and uncapping the lube. Anticipation roils through Sherlock’s body at the sound. “How about just like this?” He rises up a bit keeping Sherlock balanced, his torso rippling with effort. He is beautiful. Sherlock closes his eyes. “It’s been a while since I’ve watched your face.” Sherlock wraps his arms around his shoulders and buries his face in his long neck, his lips against the jugular. He exhales shaking as Victor’s slick finger brushes his entrance.

It’s a tease at first. It usually is with Victor. Sherlock hitches forward, forcing the finger inside, _just_ inside, and throws his head back with a deep groan. “Come on,” he urges. “I can’t, I can’t, you know I can’t --”

“You can and you will,” Victor commands. “Relax and let me--,” he kisses Sherlock’s chest, “-- let me--,” another, “take care of you.” His tongue burns along Sherlock’s clavicle and dips into the hollow of his throat. Heat pulses through him and escapes in the drop of precum that slides down his cock. Sherlock can only moan again. Victor adds another finger.

Glancing down, Sherlock watches Victor’s forearm contract and twist, contract and twist and contract. It’s slow and so very thorough, damn him. His longest finger finally brushes against his prostate and _574 jaune primaire streaks and streaks and jaune primaire 535 to jaune cadmium citron oh god oh god_ _ **ohgodohgoodgod**_

Sherlock’s vision goes jagged around the edges like torn paper. His hips sway with Victor’s hand and he rests his wet forehead against Victor’s left shoulder. His lips meet it reverently, soothingly. Victor hisses beneath him when Sherlock sets his teeth against the join of shoulder and arm, but he doesn’t say no. Instead, Victor’s left hand reaches through sweaty thighs and seizes Sherlock’s cock with just enough pressure to get his attention. With the stretch of his hole to three fingers now and the new onslaught on his cock, Sherlock rides the sensations and can’t contain his voice. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.” _oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck_

“Thought you’d never ask,” Victor rumbles into his ear and slicks his own cock and pushes home with little resistance. Sherlock’s hips go wide and his legs gelatinous as Victor picks up speed his hands gripping Sherlock’s thighs hard and sure. He’s not gentle and it’s sensational, Sherlock gorging himself on the drag and the heat.

Sherlock circles his hips, experimenting, his body recalling exactly what to do when faced with its familiar albeit infrequent associate. Victor cries out.

“Oh fuck you, you remember, don’t you? Of _course_ you do, you perfect fuck, oh _ffffffffffuck_.”

Sherlock moves, the perfect counterpoint to Victor’s ever-shallower thrusts as sensation zaps his strength. He clenches him from the inside out and laces his hands behind Victor’s head. Victor fucks up into him a little harder and tweaks one nipple while kissing the other. Sherlock arches his back, bending into it.

Their similar curls, his a little lighter than Sherlock’s and much less soft, are frizzing wildly with the addition of sweat and fingertips. Bouncing higher, slapping harder, Sherlock rides him _heels down heels down heels motherfucking down Sherlock I’ve told you_ until he _have to can’t have to oh god yes have to_ flings backwards bringing Victor with him flat against his chest forcing the head of his cock to nudge against his prostate just so.

Victor doesn’t falter; his hips keep pumping but when he tries to rise up, Sherlock holds him close, hands splayed flat across his shoulder blades. He keens and keens with a broken baritone and Victor takes the hint to stay put. Victor tucks his head further into Sherlock’s neck, his hot breath against his skin cooling the sweat and making more at the same time.

Finally, Victor squirms a hand between their bodies and strokes Sherlock’s cock. His hand slips easily up and down, tighter and loser, over the head, thumb against the slit, once more, twice more, _140 blanc necré iridescent white blank canvas blank blank nothing nothing one one six blanc de titane titanium white even whiter oh fuck oh god..._ Distantly, as if he’s not really there, Sherlock feels the tell-tale tightening inside him shiver and shock into explosion.

“Oh god oh _Sherlock_!” Victor calls from very far away.

Afterwards, Victor steals a drag from his cigarette as he sits on the bed trousers already replaced and refastened. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but fuck it. I’m post-coital and curious,” he says on an inhale. Sherlock can still taste the smoke from his first drag burning in the back of his throat. He watches Victor’s long fingers balance the delicate cigarette remembering down to his atoms just how strong they really are, and raises an eyebrow from his supine position against his pillows. It’s enough to urge Victor onwards.

“What the fuck were you doing with my shoulder? I think, yeah, there’s going to be a bruise on the front and holy _fuck_ ,” he twists to look over his left shoulder, “Am I _bleeding_?”

“Only a little,” Sherlock replies suddenly bored. “You’ve had worse.” He reaches for Victor’s cigarette, but Victor turns away with it snug between his swollen lips, eyes all blue ice when he rolls them towards the ceiling. He slides on his shirt and stands. _Thieving bastard._

“So, that’s it? No answer? Just a new thing you wanted to try? Christ, you and your _experiments_.” Victor groans and pops the final button through his cotton shirt, his waistcoat hanging open. Sherlock blinks at him. Victor stops and looks at him, smoke swirling up past his angular nose, his flushed cheeks, his drying hair.

“Vee, do you really think I can do this?” Sherlock asks solemnly, seriously. It’s Victor’s turn to blink. Sherlock looks away, lighting a fresh cigarette from the case on his nightstand. Victor sucks the last of the nicotine from his stolen smoke and grinds it out in an ashtray on the dresser. Picking it up, he moves to set it on the nightstand for Sherlock. He leans in very close, almost looming over the (very slightly) younger man. Sherlock draws in a breath. Victor smells like smoke and sex and the dry cleaner’s in Islington he won’t stop patronising no matter how many buttons they break. Such silly attachments this man makes.

“They have yet to invent something you cannot do, Sherlock Holmes,” he says simply, accenting it with an appraising, parental kiss to the middle of Sherlock’s knitted brow.

“I may need you for --”

“Just modelling. I can’t do this all the time,” he retorts. “She might start to notice if I come in smelling like semen-soaked commonwealth too often.”

“I’m not the commonwealth. And I doubt Her Majesty is want for agents willing to do her bidding.”

“You’d be surprised,” Victor says heading for the door. “Where the hell’s my --?” his fingers tap across his collarbone. It protrudes a bit and Sherlock loves the way it plays with the light. Always has.

“Banister,” Sherlock says in a gust of fresh smoke.

“Ah. Well then. Call if, oh fuck, you’re going to do what you want no matter what I say, aren’t you? I’ll see you, Sherlock.” He leaves the bedroom and pounds down the steps, slowing only to collect his scarf from the railings.

Then he’s gone and Sherlock can’t shake the feeling that he’s just betrayed something.

Or someone.

* * *

 

Mycroft twirls the handle of his weekday umbrella under his wide palm while the divot in the rug gets deeper. The phrase “ceaselessly frustrating” comes to mind constantly when he surveys his little brother. “Disappointing on a molecular level,” also appears for there the genius sits, cross-legged in the floor, surrounded by piles of paper none of which are sketches. Or even scribbles that could turn into sketches. Just notes and notes and endless infuriating notes. And Mycroft had so been enjoying his new chaise lounge.

“Why don’t you get them yourself?” He sniffs the air. “Agent Trevor was here just last night. I assumed that by now, your relationship had merited certain favours,” Mycroft doesn’t have to sneer so he doesn’t. He’s simply stating facts. Sherlock’s ears burn and his shoulders bunch then expand when he sits straighter, pretending not to care.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, which I’m not, but isn’t it a manager’s job to actually manage the career responsible for all of their luxury up to and including their new ridiculously opulent and criminally ugly wristwatch? And my sincere apologies to your lonely chaise as well.”

He doesn’t ever look at Mycroft when he speaks this way. He just blasts his words into the air around Mycroft and continues on his imperious way. It would be almost endearing if it weren’t so fucking annoying. These petty little games.

“I’m sure your new client, this Harriet Watson, can provide you with all you require,” Mycroft purrs and seats himself at the dining table that hasn’t seen a proper meal in weeks. He thumbs open a file folder full of pictures. “Ah, so she has. Here we are.”

“Don’t!” his brother bellows from his nest on the floor. His eyes go wide and then slam shut, little wrinkles fanning out across his eyelids. His hands clench against his thighs. He bows his head. “You’ll ruin everything!”

Mycroft rests his hand on the file keeping it closed. He crosses his legs and waits. His every atom begs for explanation, so he doesn’t need to say it. The air is charged with it. Mycroft waits some more: adjusts his tie, his waistcoat, their father’s Signet ring. Sherlock turns his face away and speaks to the bookcase when he finally does.

“That’s the entire point, Mycroft,” he says low and slow.

He turns around. His face has that light it only emits when he’s working, firing on every available cylinder. It’s powerfully alive. Mycroft recognises it immediately.

“Perception is reality. I will interview people who knew Captain Watson and paint what they saw in him. _As_ they saw him. Accurately. Perfectly. Every hair follicle and scar. And I will do it without looking at one single photograph of him. An exhibition built entirely on how humans see other humans.” Sherlock does not blink. “Do you see?”

Mycroft exhales, inhales. “You know I believe in you and in your talents. However, dear brother, we need this to work, Sherlock. We cannot afford a relapse --”

“I _know_ , Mycroft.”

“Then did you also know that Moriarty and Moran are joining efforts?” Sherlock stares at him. “Their September show is, oh allow me to directly quote them,” Mycroft retrieves his phone from his inner pocket. He takes his time, thumbs slowly knowing the tension will eventually drive Sherlock round the twist, but it’s a move guaranteed to grant him Sherlock’s full attention. He reads:

_...and, in celebration of our new partnership, we present our first joint show, “Suicide of Fake Genius,” an eclectic multimedia exhibition about the frailty of supposed genius in the modern art world and in London specifically. Things – oil paintings and the painters who paint them especially – are not always as they seem._

Sherlock’s jaw clenches.

“Are you sure you wish to proceed with your proposal? Such a cerebral enterprise. Would your energy not be better spent accepting one of the fellowship or Artist In Residence positions? In America perhaps? Distance. Time to recuperate. Fewer distractions.” Mycroft suggests gently.

He’s not sure he has the energy to drag Sherlock from any more gutters when the work is through with him and he’s failed. He knows he doesn’t have it within him to lock Sherlock in another rehabilitation facility. Sherlock had been so pale curled around himself in a hospital gown; he looked like he’d been cast in sickly greyscale while the world around him was in high-definition. It was as close to death (both physical and creative) as Mycroft had ever seen him.

He will not endure it again.

They cannot.

“I’m not a toddler,” Sherlock snaps. “Nor am I in need of suggestions especially from you. I’m doing this, Mycroft.”

“And Ms Watson is aware of your plan?” He slides his index finger along the wooden handle of his umbrella, digging the nail in slightly on the upstroke. It keeps his hands busy while he is emphatically not choking Sherlock to the ground.

“Of course not,” Sherlock scoffs and returns his attention to his notes. “Selling is your department, big brother.”

“Then make sure I have something to sell, _little_ brother,” replies Mycroft rising and buttoning his jacket over his waistcoat. He picks up the file containing the pictures and slides it into his briefcase. No need to tell Sherlock; Sherlock hears him do it anyway.

“The first interview is in an hour. Get out.”

“I want sketches by Thursday.”

No response. Just the soft caesura of shifting paper over paper.

“Until then.” Mycroft gathers his case and his umbrella and shows himself out.

 

* * *

 

 

> To: [Irene.Adler@nationalportraitgallery.co.uk](mailto:Irene.Adler@nationalportraitgallery.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: S. Holmes Exhibition 2014
> 
> Ms Adler:
> 
> The new show is as yet untitled but will be extraordinary.
> 
> Sherlock will be painting a single subject not from life or pictures but from information gathered through interviews only: art in its purest form -- human perception.
> 
> We look forward to continuing our relationship with your gallery.
> 
> Best,
> 
> M. Holmes

* * *

 

 

> To: [MHolmes@Holmes.com](mailto:MHolmes@Holmes.com)
> 
> Subject: Re: S. Holmes Exhibition 2014
> 
> Mycroft,
> 
> Sounds exciting, boys!
> 
> However, we have a few requirements. Sherlock will be filmed during some of the interviews and his painting process. We can edit the video into a piece that plays at the beginning of the exhibit. If we don’t, we could have a potentially volatile public on our hands crying for proof. We cannot tolerate another incident.
> 
> You understand.
> 
> We’ll be in touch.
> 
> IA

* * *

 

 

> To: [Irene.Adler@nationalportraitgallery.co.uk](mailto:Irene.Adler@nationalportraitgallery.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: Re: Re: S. Holmes Exhibition 2014
> 
> Understood.
> 
> MH

* * *

 

“Describe his head,” Sherlock exhales in a swirl of smoke. His interviewee cocks his own pudgy cranium and smiles broadly even though he’s using one of his fleshy mitts to wave the smoke away from his face. If only Sherlock couldn’t tell the exact moments in which he was misunderstood, but alas. He takes another long drag.

“His eyes were dark --?”

“His _head_ , Dr. Stamford. Not his face. His head. Skull shape, size, density, any osteopathic anomaly, et cetera. ” _Honestly. A medical man._

“Oh,” A long pause. Sherlock fights to blink without rolling his eyes.

To describe the previous interviews as _wearisome_ would be too kind. Harriet Watson had spent the entire time expelling alcohol-fuelled demons as though Sherlock were leading her recovery group thereby invalidating almost the entirety of her interview. Guilt and rose-coloured memories: an inoperative combination.

At least she is a full blood-relative. That’s something he can fucking use.

“If it’s easier,” Sherlock continues, “describe him as you did in your autopsy report. Your vernacular will not intimidate me.” This merits a nod from Doctor Michael Stamford and his shoulders sag beneath his coat. He closes his eyes without being prompted. _An infinitesimal step in the right direction._

“John was smaller than average, so his head was a bit small for the average male, but round, no obvious protrusions or anomalies. Lower mandible intact, square, and visible in profile. Zygomatic more pronounced the thinner he got especially directly after a tour. Eyes evenly spaced but deep-set. No dental anomalies. His ears stuck out a bit at the top. His lips were thin. He had a cleft in his chin.”

_Round skull rounder Northern descent Scottish rounder like hers, like Harriet, not oval circle circle perfect circle then square deep eyes big eyes deep set evenly spaced, even he said, square jaw strong strong and small man’s man military man square jaw smooth cleft chin? cleft chin bone structure good teeth think! fit it together think smooth and even even eyes round, compact --_

“Keep going,” Sherlock’s hand flying over the sketchpad drawing and tracing and retracing. “The rest of his body?”

_Neck slender and strong tendons think thick brows frame the face round face round with angles too pointy smooth smooth military doctor authoritative no smile why would he smile? it’s a warzone determined square jaw smaller than average average British male one point seven five four metres smaller stronger what about his nose? based on bone structure the nose is here and perfect perfect rounder use your wrist rounder Captain John Hamish Watson medical doctor and soldier in the sun_

He’s stopped speaking. _When did he stop?_ Sherlock slows his hand smearing the graphite a little.

“You realise he was embalmed by the time I saw him?” the doctor asks solemnly. Sherlock inhales.

“I also know you referred to him as ‘John’ and are therefore more than just a coroner. In fact, you’re not a coroner at all, Dr Stamford. In fact, going by the state of the lapels of your lab coat and your shoes, you are an anatomy professor and part-time general practitioner. In fact, you volunteered for this particular case though it was assigned to a different medical examiner and that’s not all. Your pulse has increased as have your respirations and sweat has started to gather in your hairline indicating an emotional response consistent with trauma or grief. A standard M.E. -- or standard physician come to that -- would hardly have such a visceral reaction towards a perfectly normal every-day cadaver with all its features and extremities intact even if the deceased in question was a fallen soldier in Her Majesty’s Army. Inference: you knew John Watson before he died, more than likely before he joined the Army, more than likely while you were both students at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Ah, yes, you were. You were study partners, perhaps even flatmates. It doesn’t really matter now other than the indisputable fact that John Watson was your friend. Now, tell me about his nose.”

The man’s small eyes swim behind his glasses as Sherlock speaks. How droll.

_Why do people cry?_

**# # # #**

Five sketches. Seventeen droning interviews (one of which was videotaped for god’s sake) for five ( _five!_ ) stupid fucking sketches.

Granted, they are Sherlock Holmes sketches, which makes them head and shoulders (and torso and legs) above most and so perhaps the day is not entirely wasted. Stabbing out the last cigarette of the pack into a saucer, Sherlock scrubs his hands over his face. There is only one solution and it is simple. And at the very least, it’s not America.

One: acquire enough cocaine to fell a herd of elephants -- _African_ elephants. Two: text Mycroft that it’s all over, this impossible project was utterly fucked from the start (he’ll love that), and he was right (he’ll love that too as Mycroft loves nothing more than brazen admittance of his superiority). Three: snort rail after delicious white rail until he can’t feel his face (just like the glory days) and chase it with a nice smooth injection until _goodnight, Vienna._

Sherlock twirls his phone between his index finger and his thumb wondering if he has a needle long enough to hit the superior vena cava. A direct injection to the heart seems fitting. Though by that point, he’ll be so blissed out, he will almost certainly just aim for whatever vein he can successfully hit. But still, an empty hypodermic sticking straight out of his chest would make such a marvellous final tableau. Oh, it would. Like a fourteenth century Flemish painting. Like a murder scene. Sherlock rubs his shoulder.

“Hoo hoo!” and its accompanying knock on the doorframe just inside the kitchen, Mrs Hudson calls to him. “Are you decent?”

He tilts his head on the armrest of the couch to look at her. The purple dress hugs her just right and she looks lovely as usual. Maybe even lovelier. He frowns. Given that Sherlock was not given to outward declarations of fondness, he hadn’t thought of it before: he shall miss Martha Hudson. _Edit plan. Two: text Mycroft etcetera, include proviso for Mrs Hudson’s continued monetary wellbeing, end edit._ It’s the one thing he can do for her after all she does -- _tries to do_ for him. He stares at the ceiling.

“Your brother will be here this afternoon,” she tuts at him as she tap-tap-taps toward him on her low-rise heels straightening the never-ending piles of paper as she goes. “You’ll want to be dressed, surely.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” he says clicking the consonant much more harshly than good diction entails, “what Mycroft thinks. Least of all about my clothing.”

“That’s a lie, Sherlock Holmes, and you know it. Family is all we have in the end. You always feel better when you face him dressed properly,” she pats him twice on the head with her wrinkled little hand. “I’ve got scones in the oven. Up with you.” Her overwhelmingly floral perfume assaults him as she continues shuffling about, half dusting the flat and half touching everything at least once.

Sherlock narrows his eyes. Settling deeper into the couch, the dip of his lower back pushed deeper into the cushions, he rumbles out a long sigh. He swipes his thumb across his phone screen. The brightness makes him squint harder.

**# # # #**

_Your presence is required._

_21:00. Baker St._

_SH_

Your number is in my phone.

The initials are unnecessary.

_One last hurrah._

_SH SH SH_

Christ, Sherlock,

don’t be so morbid.

_Not morbid. Imminent._

Take a shower.

You’ll feel better.

**# # # #**

Sherlock pitches his phone end over end into the middle of the sitting room. It makes a very disappointing noise as it lands against the carpet solid and relatively unscathed. Still, it is a few metres away from him now and the disconnect, however illusory, feels nice.

Sherlock brings his knees up to his chest, tucking his chin into them and situating his blue silk robe around himself like folded wings. It’s cold in here. Perhaps he has a virus or maybe even a proper disease. One thing is definitely certain: Sherlock is not well. His shoulder aches for no reason. His knee inexplicably twitches and his hands are shaking intermittently, just enough to be annoying. None of it makes any sense.

So this must be it then: the beginning of the end. Sherlock is quite literally falling apart at long last. What does it matter anyway? The talent or skill -- whichever it is -- has abandoned him like a Victorian street urchin. He can barely draw something resembling a humanoid let alone paint a fucking full-body portrait. He hasn’t mixed pigment in weeks, not stretched one canvas, and his pride will not allow him to risk a glance, _one harmless secret glance_ at a picture of his subject.

He has finally found The Thing That Will Break Him, he knows as well as he knows anything. And shockingly (sadly), it’s not an illicit drug. The exhibition of Captain John H. Watson, Medical Officer of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers is Sherlock Holmes’ final problem.

The bones of his chin and his kneecaps grind harder together while he thinks in circles. It’s a pleasant distraction, peaceful, like wandering a labyrinth and forgetting that the Minotaur lurks somewhere close by.

“Amazing!” he hears sometime later with half an ear. An astonished “fantastic!” comes a few beats later.

Sherlock’s eyes open at that.

The statements hold no notes of sarcasm or derision, so it’s definitely not Mycroft or even Victor _so just who in hell has Mrs Hudson let in now_? _Another fucking interview?_

Sherlock sits up, his blood pumping quickly as his body swims in adrenaline. His breath steady, he stands and is up and over the coffee table headed towards the invasion.

A small man with perfect posture is leaning over his untidy table studying Sherlock’s new sketches with great intensity. He has stopped on the one of John Watson’s face in profile, the one that’s stark and almost featureless with nothing but outer bone structure and no completely defined features. It’s hardly a face at all, really. His fingers trace Sherlock’s pen strokes and a smile crawls up one side of his mouth. “Quite extraordinary.”

“Do you know you do that out loud?” ventures Sherlock, the words finding him and merely spilling out.

“Sorry, I’ll stop.” But he doesn’t, doesn’t turn or even move his hand from its business of tracing the shapes on the page.

“No, it’s...” Sherlock stammers and straightens his robe, tying the sash in a tight knot against his hip. “It’s just not what people normally say.”

“What do people normally say?” And now he turns. _Bleu, 308 bleu indigo? No, 318 bleu de Prusse, Prussian blue, three one eight blue so dark it looks brown but it’s blue deep deep Prussian blue first invented in 1706, nontoxic though prepared with cyanide salts and almost totally insoluble, with a cubic lattice molecular structure that makes it impossible to express accurately on computer screens or in photographs, read the light, from above and the side, look how blue, used in histopatholigical studies to detect the over-presence of iron in biopsy specimens, midnight blue the anti-dawn, so blue it’s almost black, but oh no, it’s blue --_ _ **John Watson’s eyes are blue**_ _._

Sherlock blinks. John H. Watson, soldier and physician, beloved brother and trusted friend, smiles broadly at him, waiting. Sherlock clears his throat and inches closer.

“Normally, my subjects are rather mute on the merits of my preliminary work,” he says carefully. “Especially when they are deceased.”

John keeps smiling. “Ah,” he sniffs, “Well.” He turns back to the drawings.

Sherlock has no response. He can’t move or speak, really. Or remember taking anything that would cause this strong of a reaction. The cigarettes are the same blend as they’ve always been and his stash remains unmolested. So, logically, this isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

And yet.

There is a dead soldier standing in his flat looking back and forth through his unremarkable sketches. Touching them. And he is indeed smaller than average, but dense. Solid. _Are ghosts usually solid?_

“How are you here?” he asks in a low whisper. The flat is so quiet.

“Does it matter?” John shrugs. Then his shoulders straighten back into military rigidity. “All the same, it’s an honour to meet you, Mr Holmes.” He shoves his hand towards Sherlock and Sherlock takes it, feeling the rough and smooth of John’s hand against his.

Sherlock’s hands are bigger and his fingers reach much farther than John’s compact ones. But texture and size do not account for the jolt that travels through him when his eyes go from their clasped hands back to John’s face. It makes his hair stand on end and crackle. It’s a shock. Like inspiration. Like surprise.

“Sherlock, please,” he manages. John nods with a slight blush. _250 ocre de chair perfect on his cheeks and the tops of his ears across his nose, two five oh his round perfect nose, blend blend blend with 208 terre de sinne naturelle blend 208 into 250 darker, down his neck, on the tops of his hands, direct prolonged sunlight burnt and tanned over and over again, tan but not above the wrists, Afghanistan, he’s been there, but his lips are ocre de chair it’s ideal and if his lips are that colour than that means his --_ Sherlock lets go.

“You’re staring,” says John with a slight laugh and walks past Sherlock brushing against the blue silk on his elbow as he goes. “This is a prime spot. Must be expensive.” John gestures with his shoulder.

Sherlock narrows his eyes. There is a little bistro table with a dripping candle in its middle sitting before a large bay window where the wall of his flat should be. The night makes the candle all the brighter, the flame licking out at him like an overly excited puppy. Sherlock follows and runs his hands down the front of his blazer, his white shirt cuffs just visible. This suit jacket always rides up. He inhales.

_Garlic, wine, wax, fire, smoke. Angelo’s._

Sherlock makes his way slowly to the empty chair across from John, a disquieting feeling not altogether unlike fear sweeps its way through his gut. Then he looks up and there sits John, eyes bright and two fingers pressed against his bottom lip. He has removed the black coat with the shoulders like body armour to reveal a plain oatmeal jumper. It makes his skin look darker and his hair look blonder, and something inside Sherlock relaxes weaving through him in a gentle current.

“You’re hungry?” Sherlock inquires unbuttoning his own jacket and sitting down. He runs his fingers along the tablecloth, making sure it’s real. The fabric hums against his thumbnail.

“Starving and you hadn’t anything in,” John replies jovially. His eyebrows twitch as he peruses the menu, his pupils going wider and obscuring some of the blue. His face is weathered, lived in, and expressive to the extreme. Whether or not he knows this about himself is another matter. The tiniest hints of emotions seem to trigger movements that push and pull his skin into fascinating, complicated shapes. For example, his brow creases and his lips thin when he smiles at Sherlock like he’s waiting for an answer. _Oh._

“I’m sorry?”

“What’s good here, I’ve never been, I said. Northumberland is a bit off my usual route.”

“I usually just eat whatever Angelo sets in front of me.” John laughs. It’s startling.

“Feeds you up, does he? That’s nice of him.” John puts down his menu and takes a sip of red wine with another smile. His smiles. They’re so natural. So easy. Sherlock watches, fighting hard to keep the confusion from peeking through.

“He’s a...--, he owes me. He required an elaborate gift in order to stave off an impending divorce. I obliged.”

“Extraordinary! And your painting saved his marriage?”

“No, they’ve divorced. But he got a huge payout for an original Holmes in the settlement.”

“Shame,” John frowns, deep grooves appearing where there weren’t any before. His whole face seems to sag.

“Why? You’ve not even met Angelo.”

“It’s always a shame when relationships end.” The full stop is audible as John takes a bite of fettuccine in béchamel, his meal mostly gone. He twirls his fork against his spoon and looks at Sherlock, cocking an eyebrow. “So what’s all this about, then? Why me?” The last of the pasta is shoved into his mouth and he chews slowly.

“Your sister hired me. You’re a job,” says Sherlock evenly. It rolls off his tongue so simply, but it tastes funny. He takes a sip of his own glass of red to get rid of it.

“No, I know your work. You don’t waste your time with _jobs,_ ” John counters. “So what am I?” He crosses his arms and blinks. He expects so much, this determined army doctor with his stern mouth and kind eyes.

“An overly elaborate way to eviscerate my arch enemy and his new partner. Creatively speaking.”

John shakes his head, the strands of his hair picking up the candlelight and tossing it around. _028 or, gold, gold the perfect start but watch read the light watch are you watching? it starts or but look deeper 412 brun sennelier four one two brown underneath deep underneath but lighter lighter when it reaches towards the sunlight towards the light, look at it in the moonlight though, darken the or, lightly lightly darken, add streaks, 029 argent streaks but not overt, just silver silver streaks near his ears at the temples, he’s older but not old but he could cover them but doesn’t, the silver hairs watch them blend blend hide them in plain sight he’s not even trying to hide them, look look fucking look watch him watch him_

“People don’t have arch enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.”

Sherlock sighs, wishing for a cigarette. “Clearly you’ve not met James Moriarty either.”

Sherlock leans over the table a bit more. The heat from the candle caresses his raised eyebrows and he can smell John across from him. “What do _real_ people have then? In their _real lives_?”

John shrugs again and leans back in his chair. “Friends. Family. People they like, people they don’t like.”

“Well,” Sherlock looks down at John’s empty plate. When he looks up once more ready to continue the conversation, John sits on a stool between the open windows. From the sun, it’s nearly dawn and a good one too. _He’s glowing like an angel if they existed and if they did, they’d all look like him, read the light, 605 rouge cadmium clair red just behind his ears, it’s lighting up the blood, the capillaries are open and flowing and radiant 505 jaune de mars blend behind him sky clouds sky they’re striped behind him, 116 blanc de titane, the clouds are transparent 03 médium transparent but they’re there it’s London isn’t it, it’s early, he’s used to it, look how open his eyes are, wide wide open, his face is, he’s used to it these hours once he’s awake he’s awake, look at him looking at you, 605 into 505 and oh two eight it’s or, gold he’s gold he glows gold at dawn_

Sherlock recrosses his legs where he sits in his grey leather chair. He clears his throat forcing his voice back into use. “I hate jumpers. They’re like good haircuts on poorly bred poodles. They mask what’s really important.”

“So now I’m a dog?”

“I didn’t say --”

“You want I should take it off?” John cuts in. Sherlock’s breathing stutters a little. He covers it with a quiet cough. John does not break eye contact.

“Yes,” Sherlock says finally.

“Random shirtless man in your flat? Won’t your girlfriend mind?” John’s lips curl into a not-quite-smile, more a baring of teeth. Interesting and, _surely he’s not that obvious_. John looks at the knot in the floor just in front of Sherlock’s toe and no further.

“Girlfriends. Not really my area.”

“Your…-- boyfriend, then?” stammers John catching Sherlock’s eyes again. “Which is fine, by the way.”

“I know it’s fine.” Sherlock’s heart beats faster, louder, like the beginning of a high but harder, more adamant. It’s not arrhythmia. Yet.

“So you’ve not got a boyfriend?”

“No.” This is starting to hurt his chest. Sherlock feels his ribs struggle against the fist-sized muscle, struggle to contain it when it apparently wants nothing more than to escape his body and live forever over there in John Watson’s front pocket. It’s worse when John grins. Then John grins and this is the worst it’s ever been.

“You’re unattached. Like me.”

This is silly.

This is impossible.

This is sleep deprivation.

This is food poisoning.

This is chemical reactions.

This is _not_ _real_.

This is, this is, this -- _is_ \--

“John,” Sherlock says low and as calmly as possible, “while I’m flattered by your interest, of course you realise that as a professional artist with rather a pronounced history, the human form holds no more interest to me than how it all fits together so that I may recreate it on canvas? You are a conundrum of carbon and water. Nothing more.”

John holds his hands up. “No, no. I wasn’t...” he stops himself, chuckles softly. His eyes crinkle at the edges, years of sun damage and happiness there. “Maybe I was, I don’t know. I --, I wanted you to know that it’s fine. I’m not afraid of you.”

Sherlock turns quickly and picks up his sketch pad. His favourite pencil slides in the sweat on his palm. When he turns back, John stands, arms splayed sideways like Leonardo’s man, confidently nude with eyes raging into his own. He doesn’t hide a thing. Sherlock’s head swims.

“Don’t stare,” says Sherlock.

“ _You’re_ staring,” John points out. _The largest organ in the body, from the Latin cutis referring to both the dermis and epidermis, temperature and water retention regulation, and sensation, touch, it stretches it folds it protects it restricts and it opens and it closes look at that Jesus fucking Christ, that scar, that scar, obvious ballistic trauma, so smooth and angry, granulation tissue now, it’s still a little pink it’s still healing but that’s as good as it gets, but does he feel it? can he feel it? does it hurt when it rains? I can feel it, his shoulder, his clavicle, his scapula all re-calcified, his tight new skin, it’s brand new--I feel it._

“I’m working. We can’t both of us stare.”

“Why not? I’m just carbon and water.”

**# # # #**

Sherlock starts awake and reflexively hugs himself tighter. His torso aches with it. He sits up silently fingers still flush against his ribs, holding himself together. The flat echoes it back to him: nothing and no-one.

His phone still lies on the rug where it landed. His messy table is just where it had been, windows in the right place, no candles, no pasta.

And the man with the dark blue eyes is gone.

Mrs Hudson’s senseless heels click against the stairs and Sherlock springs to standing, arms still crossed tight. She scowls when she sees him, her tea tray wobbling a bit when she sighs “Sherlock Holmes, I told you an hour ago to get dressed and now your brother is nearly here!” She sets down the tray and goes about tidying the kitchen. Again. “Honestly. Like talking at a brick wall.”

Sherlock concentrates and releases his muscles group by group as he slinks to his room to change. _Into battle._ He scratches through his hair, pushing it away from his face.

Sherlock closes his eyes reaching for a suit in his wardrobe, and abruptly there, is the correct and total image of Dr John Watson, RAMC, sitting in the foyer of his mind palace smiling back at him, his mysterious face filled in. He opens them again and something deep in his chest flutters, tickles him from the inside like knowing the truth of a secret all the way to your marrow.

And it’s there in his first floor bedroom, stepping into freshly laundered trousers, that suddenly Sherlock Holmes is saved.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

> To: [MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk](mailto:MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: Thank You
> 
> Mycroft,
> 
> The interview footage is workable and we did receive the releases from Ms Watson for the materials. We thank you.
> 
> Now, where are my sketches?
> 
> IA

* * *

 

> To: [Irene.Adler@NationalPortraitGallery.co.uk](mailto:Irene.Adler@NationalPortraitGallery.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: Re: Thank You
> 
> Ms Adler:
> 
> Forthcoming.
> 
> I appreciate your patience.
> 
> MH

* * *

 

The Haydn booms down around him joyful and brassy as Victor ascends the steps to the flat. No wonder Sherlock wasn’t answering his phone; he couldn’t fucking hear it. And there he stands in his usual garb of pressed trousers and a tailored shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows all hidden behind a thick black apron speckled with smears of paint. The curls are pushed off of his forehead with a cut off t-shirt sleeve, and he holds one paintbrush in his hand, another behind his left ear and another between his teeth. And he’s _working_.

Victor only realises he’s smiling after his cheeks begin to twinge.

He moves closer until his hands rest against Sherlock’s hipbones and buries his nose behind Sherlock’s unoccupied ear. “I know you heard me,” he says. Sherlock hmm’s in his throat and keeps painting stroke after stroke after stroke until he achieves the perfection no-one but he can see. Victor inhales, filling his lungs with nothing but Sherlock. “I forgot what it was like when you work.” He presses his fingers a bit deeper into Sherlock’s hips, the apron unforgiving to the strain. Sherlock doesn’t stop or even slow. He just keeps working and trusts that Victor will either fall into step or get out of the way. So Victor falls into step. As usual.

They sway. The violins swirl around them like they have a fever, like the entire strings section is a swarm of bees surrounding them on all sides, each intent on their tasks and too busy for conversation. And from the looks of it, Sherlock has been keeping pace with them. Huge canvases with their first layers of oil drying slowly are propped against almost every available surface. Blank ones wait by the couch and the door, some landscape, some portrait, all pulled and nailed into perfect quadrilaterals. He breathes again, deeper this time. Always deeper because Sherlock is fathomless. Fifteen years on and he still hasn’t found the bottom.

“Mmm, the smell of you,” he says with lips just touching Sherlock’s neck.

“Turpentine?” Sherlock grits out not taking his eyes away from the iris he’s filling in with one of the darkest blues Victor has ever seen. He’s no longer beguiled by the paintings themselves. They’re extraordinary, of course, always have been. It’s to be expected. But he knows the truth beneath the layers and layers of varnish and oil and pigment. The real work of art is the man who creates these things, this man -- just _look_ at him. Jesus _fuck_.

“No, it’s you,” Victor says as he backs away a bit, dragging his mouth along his hairline, down the nape of his neck. He runs his hands down Sherlock’s long back, still keeping in step as Sherlock moves beneath him. The fabric of the shirt wets under Victor’s hot breath while he works himself down until he’s on his knees, his face level with the mouth-watering bend of Sherlock’s arse. “I can’t stand it,” he whispers caressing the curves in slow circles. “When you’re like this, I can’t...”

At this, Sherlock finally stops moving. “Vee. I’m working,” Sherlock admonishes but without much sting (or even much breath really) and his hips roll backwards, pressing his flesh harder into Victor’s attention. _Your body’s betraying you again. ‘Transport’ my arse. God, this arse._

“So work then, _genius_ ,” Victor challenges and swoops between his legs and bobs back up, his hair scraping along under the apron. Sherlock’s legs go a little wider to accommodate him and Victor holds him in place. He inhales and lays his tongue against _ah yes, hello there, you_ Sherlock’s developing erection and moans into the cloth.

Victor hears at least one paintbrush land on the floor behind him and Sherlock’s legs go even wider. _I didn’t mean to, Sherlock, I really didn’t, I’ll be in so much trouble but it’s been forever since I -- and you you you --_ “God--, you,” Victor rasps out and starts sucking him through his trousers, the broad of his tongue pressing, pressing, pressing against Sherlock’s trapped cock. He feels it, feels _everything_ : temperature variation, textures, and so much heat.

Carefully, Victor settles his teeth around the smallest zipper known to man and pulls down, gripping the muscles of Sherlock’s implausible backside so that his fingers leave little indentations. _Maybe even bruises, how brilliant_. _Payback is a bitch._

When Sherlock shifts again, flattening his feet to the floor and his cock as hard as Victor has ever felt it, Victor slides one hand over Sherlock’s hip and down and down until his middle finger and his thumb just barely touch to steady the velvety head of it against his lips. Victor’s eyes are closed and it’s dark under here to boot, but he knows Sherlock is leaking -- he can _smell it oh Jesus fucking Christ_. He steals a taste from the tip before slopping wet, wet kisses first down the shaft and then back up, teasing the tip with puckered lips and sneaky touches of tongue.

There’s nothing quite like it. It’s not fair. He tastes like family Christmas, like summer;like music should always sound is how he fucking tastes _._ Sherlock’s thighs ripple around him with the effort of staying upright. Victor hears his breath catch and smiles again.

With his eyes still closed, his ears and nose take over. He takes his time, in no particular rush until he can’t take it anymore. The fumes from the paint paired with the sheer rawness of Sherlock compounded by the quick, uneven breaths he’s dragging through his nose are making him high. Fitting his mouth around the girth of him, Victor sucks him harder and harder, massaging the underside with his tongue playing with either side of the vein and keeping the suction steady, so steady in the ways that drive Sherlock utterly round the twist.

Victor doesn’t have to see it to see _him_ : one hand balancing the glass palette smeared with dark blue paint, hovering it above the bulge of Victor’s head under his smock and the other buried in his hair somewhere near his ear; his bottom lip swelling as his teeth dig into it over and over; the flare of his nostrils when they open wide; his flat torso fighting against the gravitational pull of pleasure to avoid sending them both crashing into the half-finished eyeball of some bloke. _Christ yes, that is just exquisite_.

Finally releasing the base of Sherlock’s cock from where it had been holding off his orgasm, Victor moves two dexterous fingers under his balls, tickling them as he passes, and presses knowingly _just just --there!_ and Sherlock fails to stifle the entirety of an ecstatic yell. So Victor does it again and again, softer then harder then softer again, coaxing all sorts of wonderful noises from Sherlock’s unoccupied mouth. The angle is taking its toll: his jaw aches, spit and precome flood down his chin and into his shirt collar, and ask him if he gives a good goddamn. Using the other hand to stroke where his mouth can’t reach, Victor increases the pace.

When the keening starts and it doesn’t stop, Victor knows. He kisses the slit of Sherlock’s cock then lower, fitting the point of his top lip just beneath the head before letting out ruthless panting breaths against his fraenulum. He pushes up and up with his fingers, the gland under them sending pulse after pulse through Sherlock’s whole body.

Sherlock’s balls tighten ever so slightly against his hand and, absolutely desperate for it _for him admit it, Trevor_ , Victor moves fast to catch every last drop in his hot, open mouth.

The cigarette they share tastes amazing as they sprawl on the rug side by side. Sherlock’s apron is off, waded in a heap somewhere, and his trousers done back up while the sticky patch on Victor’s dries. _Fuck it._ Sherlock’s hair is riotous especially without the makeshift headband, and it reminds Victor so much of university, his chest aches though he hasn’t rowed a boat in half a decade.

Sherlock starts to giggle his low repressed giggle. Victor glances at him sidelong.

“What’s so funny?”

”The coxswain,” Sherlock replies.

_How did he --? Oh fuck it. There aren’t enough hours in the day._ Victor laughs with him and blows smoke through his nose. Their fingers brush as he hands over the cigarette.

“What about him?”

“You fancied him,” says Sherlock demurely.

“We all did, you ponce,” Victor retorts.

“You were thinking about him just now.” Victor sighs.

"Fine,” he says reaching for the smoke and finishing it. “You caught me. Every summer, every morning, five a.m. on the dot, there I am staring straight up the leg of his shorts. Beautiful knob on him too, you should have seen it.” Victor watches Sherlock roll his eyes with one eyebrow arching like it does when he thinks Victor is being particularly unamusing. He stabs out the cigarette and rolls onto his side to face Sherlock, propping his head on his hand. He trails a finger along Sherlock’s jaw.

“I was _working_ , Victor,” Sherlock says gravely, all the hard-won, post-blowjob relaxation ebbing from his face. He blinks until his eyes are grey and dark as flint stones. It’s that same old stare.

“I know,” Victor apologises with his face and rubs his thumb over Sherlock’s pink lower lip. “That’s what did it.” He presses a soft kiss to his mouth. Sherlock doesn’t kiss back, just blinks. Victor rests his forehead against the bridge of Sherlock’s nose. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you that happy. I couldn’t stand it.” He leans back to smile at him again. “And it’s not like I insisted you reciprocate, I know the rules. Who is this guy anyway?”

Sherlock turns away and sits up rubbing at his shoulder.

“Just a job,” he says getting up, shaking his head a little. He retrieves his headband and slides it back on. He stretches. From this view, Sherlock towers like a spire in the late morning light of the flat and gleams like one of those statues he hates so much. (They never speak of how he had been complete and utter shite at the whole process during his required sculpting course. _“They take up all the room in the gallery and no-one can even touch them, they’re ridiculous, Vee.”_ )

“Oh wait, this is that dead soldier?”

“Doctor John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers,” Sherlock corrects him.

“Well, I’m glad you finally saw sense. Hand them over, I want to compare. That’s always my favourite bit,” Victor says getting up.

He puts his jacket to rights and when he buttons it, it covers the stain, but only just. He can make it home to change at least, before he meets Anthea in Bloomsbury. Six tube stops with an itchy patch. He’s been worse.

“Hand what over?” Sherlock bends to retrieve his brushes and places them back on the edge of the easel before plucking just one of them up for cleaning.

“The pictures, you dope, c’mon.” Victor holds his hand out. “I won’t tell anyone you looked.”

“I haven’t -- looked at anything...” he replies dragging out the last syllable as if to continue. Victor cocks his eyebrow. Sherlock doesn’t move. Doesn’t shrug. Just stands there.

“Sherlock?”

“I’m not lying,” he snaps too fast.

“I know. I know when you’re lying. I know you’re not lying, but you sound…” Victor looks around again. It’s John Watson in profile, in a life-sized frontal view, in an extreme close up of his eye and nose -- it’s angles unachievable without a living (or exhumed) human subject (or without recognising bits of himself when Sherlock uses him to model), and yet here he stands opposite John Watson. Apparently. But. “But. _Sherlock._ ”

“Yes?”

“These are impossible.”

“You mean improbable.”

“No, I mean fucking impossible! I told you I believed in you before – and I _do_ , and I had Sally pull this guy’s file anyway in case you actually wised up and decided to stop bloody torturing yourself, but now I’m standing here with all of this and these angles? I’m not a genius like you, but I’m not stupid and even I know you can’t get -- , and none of them look a _thing_ like me so you didn’t use me at all and, and you’re telling me that you’ve never looked at him? Never seen him before in your life? Didn’t even bug Molly to show you his corpse at the morgue? That’s --, I can’t --, --I don’t understand!”

“You know who I am!” Sherlock booms and jabs the end of a brush into Victor’s chest. “You know how I function. This job is not impossible. And once that is eliminated, whatever remains, _however improbable_ must be the truth,” he says sternly with all the breath in his lungs. He crosses his arms and locks eyes with Victor. “I have never laid eyes on the corporeal remains of John Watson.”

“I hear you, but –”

“What?!”

Sherlock is glowing; he’s fucking _radiant_ like he’s been dipped in starlight, like a god if gods were truly omnipotent, trapped in mortal confines, but power oozing out of the cracks in the veneer. Sherlock’s moonlight eyes blaze out and it stops Victor’s heart for a good three seconds. Victor knows better than to argue with a deity.

“Nothing,” he says swallowing. “Just...nothing.”

 

* * *

 

> To: [MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk](mailto:MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: Ess
> 
> Keep an eye on him. There’s something he’s not telling us, but I don’t know what it is.
> 
> Aren’t you worried about him?
> 
> T

* * *

 

> To: <<SECURE LINK>>
> 
> Subject: Re: Ess
> 
> I worry about him. Constantly.
> 
> Your concern is appreciated, Agent.
> 
> MH

* * *

 

> To: [Irene.Adler@NationalPortraitGallery.co.uk](mailto:Irene.Adler@NationalPortraitGallery.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: S. Holmes Exhibition 2014
> 
> Ms Adler:
> 
> Sketches and slides of pieces will be delivered by end of business today.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> MH

* * *

 

> To: [MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk](mailto:MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: RE: S. Holmes Exhibition 2014
> 
> Darling boys!
> 
> They just arrived. Excellent as usual. In fact, if Sherlock has a few finished pieces, I could use them to preview the show at next week’s event.
> 
> You’re both invited of course. Details attached. You’ll be on the list.
> 
> See you there,
> 
> IA

* * *

 

 

By the third time his wrist fails to make the correct shape, Sherlock gives up and crawls into bed. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, John.”

Exhaustion is a cruel mistress, but one that must be obeyed if for nothing else than the sake of the canvases -- and only for the canvases. The work comes first. And so, for them, he will sleep until he wakes up and mix fresh pigment and keep going. He respects The Work too much to offer anything less than his unconditional best. Especially this project. Especially John. _Dr Watson? Captain Watson?_

The three finished pieces -- a profile of his face in candlelight, a full-frontal nude that made Sherlock inexplicably blush, and an intense study of his left eye that’s drying darker and bluer the longer it sits -- lean against the far wall of the flat surveying the progress of his work like guards along a watchtower.

Sherlock hears that voice over the bubbling din of the Vivaldi and Strauss _(Strauss, for god’s sake)_ he blares -- the one telling him he’s amazing, that people don’t have arch enemies, that he’s not afraid of him -- and even though he knows it isn’t his real voice (it can’t be), he smiles. Sherlock is ridiculous.

No, sleep won’t take long to find him, not tonight, not when he grinds himself this close to the quick. Sherlock strips bare and slides beneath the dark duvet. Measuring his breaths, it’s his mind that takes a bit to press the brakes. He remembers: _He’s sitting there in the sunrise after another long day at hospital, he probably saw a lot of blood last night, his eyes sparkle a bit more 116 blanc de titane, titanium white, it excites him but it wears him and he wears it, little flecks of blood on his gingham collar someone moved when they weren’t supposed to he got most of it off his neck, his neck, sturdy caramel column, seven cervical vertebrae articulating moving column, darker skin than his chest his hips his thighs, exposed and delicate, more reactive melanin here blend blend and he’s a natural blonde all the way down all the way down, gradient gets darker on the way down, focus! bright open palms, he’s showing me, what are you showing me, John? why are you smiling at me? what have I done now?_ He breathes slow and deep, his spine crackling in grateful release, and he sinks and sinks.

Rolling over, Sherlock stops when his shoulder hits something. _Hard_.

“What the hell, Sherlock?” John yawns at him. His eyes are closed, but the rest of him is solid and bright in the streaks of moonlight coming in through the window. Sherlock shifts around to get a better look of what unequivocally cannot be happening.

Indeed, John Watson is back.

Indeed, John Watson is in his bed.

His face turns towards Sherlock, a comforting smirk playing at his thin lips and his arms reaching out to gather him in close. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Sherlock swallows through his tight, closing throat. “I don’t know,” he answers soft and marginally pulls away, tensing at John’s gentle grip. John opens his eyes, blinking fast to adjust to the light. Sherlock’s mouth waters.

“What is it?” _His eyes changed they changed! look mix 389 laque bleu lake blue like water like still water blend lighter, even lighter, not bleu de Prusse not bleu clair not like Victor’s, he’s not like Victor not at all, oh his face, such a sweet face, such a calm face he’s stable he’s here, he’s got you let him have you, stripe out the eyelashes, carefully carefully quickly each one, fast fast fast especially the bottom ones, he’s well-rested, oh look at him, good morning, John, good morning, stranger I’ve known all my life, his eyebrows, look at the curve, he doesn’t groom them they’re darker towards his nose don’t look at his nose! that’s where it all goes to hell talk say something he’s staring again say something you ignorant fucking--_

“I, I -- don’t know how, -- we got here.” Sherlock’s voice sounds gruff and confined. He clears his throat. John chuckles and reels himself closer.

“You ran and I went after you.” His breath is hot on Sherlock’s neck and his nose bumps against the skin behind his ear when he nestles in. “Do you remember anything?” His fingers tickle up and down Sherlock’s flank, caressing, possessive.

“There…was,” Squinting his eyes closed, Sherlock is terrified to find that he _does_ remember and words are coming from somewhere beyond his sentient mind. “There was a lot of pink. And Lestrade was there..?”

“God, they were right. You and red wine _are_ mortal enemies. Must remember to keep it on the top shelf. For emergencies only.” He laughs and yawns again.

_Sebaceous and apocrine glands become active in humans at puberty and are responsible for the secretion of chemical compounds that are necessary for the skin microbiome that reside there to metabolise it into traceable odorous substances. The total number of bacteria on humans is estimated at 10 to the twelfth power at any given moment, these coupled with the actions of the microbiome break down the lipids in sweat to create smaller molecules which are influenced by diet, genetics, gender, and activity what’s he doing what’s he done?, strongest sites include the axillary region, the areolas, the navel and the genitals, mothers know their babies by smell, smell may subconsciously influence the choosing of a sexual partner and John smells, John smells -- oh John smells like male and danger and desert and soft jazz and new skin and stiff canvas coats and latex-free gloves and violence and calm and bravery and strong tea and stronger coffee and hot leather and the tiny bit of product he puts in his hair and skin and skin and skin and John and me – John smells like me, me we, I’ve been here before._

John continues smooth as silk and lazy, “He and Molly needed your help with a case, a lady that was mutilated? You had to give them a face on her based on what was left because you’re a fucking genius.”

“Jennifer Wilson. The missing woman from Cardiff,” Sherlock nods, unable to control the way his body relaxes against John’s. Or the way his hands slide up the plane of John’s back. Or the way his toes flex against the bottoms of John’s feet in time to the Edith Piaf playing distantly in his head. His body has never been so comfortable nor his mind so alarmingly, petrifyingly separated into two different pieces.

“Right. Dreadful business.”

“And you came along? Why?”

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun now, could I?” He feels John’s expression wrinkle into a smile against his neck. Hot, hot breath. _Oh god._

“I suppose not.”

“Then Molly insisted we join them for dinner at theirs,” recounts John to his clavicle, his voice going slower as his fatigue catches up to him. “And you said she over-cooked the beef and she said that she would keep her promise not to physically assault you in front of your new…” John stops. He licks his lips, the tip of his tongue coming into briefest contact with Sherlock’s skin.

John stops tracing the lines on Sherlock’s ribs. Sherlock takes the opportunity to lean out of their embrace a bit to watch him and maybe start stitching the two halves of his brain back together. Physical contact is distracting and he needs to focus. He pulls his hands back too and curls them against his chest like he’s trying to ward off the cold or an impending impact. Maybe both.

John’s not looking at him -- he’s looking _through_ him the way Sherlock usually looks at people. Sherlock finds that he dislikes that very much, indeed. “My new what?” he prompts. John’s hands retreat from their resting place on his sides and John shoves them under his pillow. Sherlock finds he hates that even more.

“She said friend, I’m your new friend. But.” John looks up at him. The dark settles around them and John is so still, so quiet and _so_ still.

_He learnt that well before the Army taught him how to sleep in the dunes and turn his boots upside down because of scorpions and venomous snakes and how to judge the calibre of the bullet by the echo fade,_ _**what are you talking about** _ _he learnt to disappear, to go unnoticed but why? why and how, how could anyone not notice him? he affects gravity, the laws of physics the weight of the air in the room in my lungs there’s not enough space in my blood for it his smile --_ _**this isn’t real** _ _he’s so dangerous, he’s a forest fire, he’s a hurricane, how do they not notice? he’s a virus,_ _**you don’t know him** _ _a disease for which I will never seek a cure because we are here_ _**where?** _ _and I am so held, so very very held in the palm of his steady little hand -- he’s the antithesis, the converse, the opposite and the equal --_ _**you’re not --** _

“That’s incorrect?” Sherlock whispers. The question sits against his tongue. It feels like the edge of a blade.

“Well, I don’t tend to sleep in my friends’ beds,” John confesses, eyes darting down and back up.

“And yet here you are.” He’s breathless.

“And I don’t tend to do this with my friends either,” John replies just before his lips meet Sherlock’s.

Sherlock twists awake so hard, his spine wrenches. His hands slap the sheets and the apology dies in his throat when he realises he is alone. He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms, presses them further into their sockets until he stars explode. Opening them slowly, his bedroom looks back empty and exactly the same as when he’d gone to sleep -- he looks at his phone -- less than an hour ago.

Sherlock laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs. He’s an idiot. It’s so obvious, really. Of _course_! Delirium. Plain, dull, run-of-the-mill delirium brought on by the fumes of the linseed oil and new brand of turpentine paired with the exhaustion and poor diet and even poorer hydration pattern. Of course. This is exactly why he goes years between exhibitions. It always ends with him seeing babies crawl across the ceiling (though that may have been the heroin) or something worse like ending up at Mycroft’s house. This is idiotic. This is stupid.

**# # # #**

_I require a sleep_

_aid rx._

_SH_

Not a chance.

Addictive.

MH

_Guess I’ll just use the_

_heroin, then._

_SH_

I’ll bring them by

later. Good night.

MH

**# # # #**

He rolls over pulling the duvet over his head.

When he opens his eyes again, it’s as if he had just been blinking. And he’s there, back in the room with Jeffrey Hope, the brittle-faced cabbie, who, when Sherlock had refused to paint a picture of his late wife from a collection of shoddy photographs, drew a gun on him. His crooked, crowded smile still set Sherlock’s own teeth on edge.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time, Mister Holmes,” he warns cocking the trigger and squaring his stance. “And then you’re gonna say yes or I’m gonna shoot you.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “That’s not much of a negotiation, now, is it?”

He’s calm enough. He’s dreamt this before, especially right after it happened. Hope’s bullet goes wide (because Sherlock is just a bit faster than a tubby cab driver and dodges it), but the impact of them both hitting the floor is memorable and bruises his ribs and his right arm for weeks. Time slows down as it can in dreams and Sherlock’s muscles tense to prepare for his leap forward and a bit to the right. Three…two…

A shot rings out from behind him and Jeff slumps to the ground.

Sherlock is left staring, half-crouched, and extremely confused. Behind him, a window has broken, but no sniper, no suspect, just the building across the narrow alley and there lies Jeffrey Hope, too-late romantic, with appalling arbitration skills and a bullet lodged his heart.

When Greg arrives with an impressive entourage, he sits on the back bumper of the ambulance next to Sherlock. Sherlock, draped in a loud orange blanket, sips the cup of truly awful tea a medic had given him and attempts to focus.

“So you didn’t see anything?” Greg’s silver hair reflects every colour of the flashing lights. It’s irritating.

“My back was to the window, Lestrade. I _couldn’t_ have seen anything! And besides, this isn’t how this goes! Hope didn’t get shot before -- _I_ did. Or I almost did. Oh fuck me.”

“No, thank you. Just take a deep breath and calm --”

“A kill shot over that distance from that kind of weapon? You’re looking for a crack shot not just a marksman, his hand couldn’t have shaken even a little. So someone who’s acclimatised to violence, but they didn’t fire until I was in immediate danger, so obviously someone with a strong moral principle as well, so probably a history of military service and nerves of steel and this, this isn’t how it goes, _this isn’t how it goes!_ ” Sherlock pitches his tea to the ground and puts his face in his hands.

“You’re obviously in shock. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” Greg pats his back and Sherlock glares at him. He pulls his hand back. “Just go home, Sherlock.”

Rising and tossing the garish blanket into the ambulance, Sherlock looks out upon the gathering crowd of bystanders all stopping at the hubbub on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday evening. They’re all so curious, such stupid, gawking cows until…

John stands like a toy soldier, all perfect parade rest and straight lines, behind the yellow tape. Suddenly it’s just the two of them under a humming streetlamp. Sherlock’s mouth goes dry.

“Sergeant Dimmock was just explaining. He threatened you for a painting? Dreadful business, dreadful!” His frown is cartoonish and Sherlock cannot repress a smirk. Nor can he blink just yet.

“Nice shot.”

John doesn’t move, just makes his jaw more square if that is even possible. “Yes,” he agrees. “Yes, must have been.”

“ _John_. How are you here?”

“Right place, right time. You were going to tackle him, weren’t you, you idiot?”

“This is ridiculous, I _did_ tackle him! I didn’t know you then! Now? I didn’t know you!” Sherlock ardently wishes he sounded less indignant, but during this particular outburst, he can’t seem to help it.

“I know you, Sherlock Holmes.”

“How? _Why_ are you here?”

“Making up for lost time,” John says and grabs Sherlock by both lapels and steals the breath from his very bloodstream. His tongue is soft and rough at the same time and _oh god_

Sherlock jerks awake and scrabbles with his big hands for his phone. Just after three. No new texts, no new emails, and no new _friends_ between his sheets. He checks quickly -- yes, the Jeffrey Hope incident report reads the same as it always had: the tackling and the bruised ribs and the arrest. Dejected, Sherlock slams his face into the pillow he hadn’t been using and groans a deep breath. Paint, turpentine, fabric softener, and something else _something else_. He remembers it. _What is it?!_

Up and out of bed, he stumbles into the bathroom. He bends over the sink and sucks water from the tap in long pulls until the nausea stops. He’s panting and panting and panting. Why? Perhaps the fear of the ghost of his work subject rather literally haunting his dreams can do that to a person. Perhaps getting the snog of a lifetime by the very same ghost does that too. That would at least explain the erection.

Sherlock has had enough and sod waiting on Mycroft. Back in his room, he slides open the false bottom of his sock drawer and secures two white pills from his well-stocked stash. They are not labelled, but he knows them by their smooth sides and long, soothing shape. He swallows them dry and flops back onto the bed. If memory serves (and it always does), these are particularly fast --

Cracking an eye, he sputters when something wet tickles his nose. The taste is stale and acrid. Sherlock is on the floor of his bedroom, half of his face cold from lying in a pool of vomit for who knows how long. _What an amateur_ he thinks until he sees them, the two oblong pills he’d taken, lying there completely undigested. He scrubs a hand across his mouth and gets up to start a shower.

This calls for reinforcements.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

He looks more frazzled than usual, his hair a bit wilder around his face, but she’s seen him like this before. He’s working. Arranging the plate of biscuits in front of him, she catches his eyes and stares him down until he takes one. He dunks it into his tea, using it like a spoon, then shoves the whole thing into his mouth.

“That’s more like it,” says Molly cheerily as she sits down opposite him. Manoeuvring her round belly is something she hasn’t quite got used to yet, especially when it comes to transitions like sitting from standing and vice versa. Her centre of gravity is skewed, and she keeps running him or her (she hopes it’s a him with eyes exactly like Greg) into the edges of tables and counters and doorframes. Idiot. “Now. Are you going to tell me why you’re doing an entire exhibition of only one subject or do I have to carry on force-feeding you biscuits until you confess?”

“Doesn’t the order of bed rest mean you should actually be in a bed?” Sherlock snipes staring into his milky tea.

“Figure of speech. I’m allowed to sit at tables and eat biscuits when my artist friend stops by looking…” She really looks at him now from across their small dining table. He’s a bit glazed over, but the flush of his cheeks and the slight quirk on his lips -- she’s seen them before too. Just once, mind. Years ago. And that had ended rather spectacularly. “Sherlock, tell me.”

“Molly,” he starts softly meeting her eyes. “Something has happened to me.”

She leans forward and covers his long hand with hers. He doesn’t recoil like usual. Something is definitely amiss.

“What do you need?”

Then Sherlock does take his hand back and rakes it through his curls. It does them no good and they fall right back where they’d been resting above his eyebrows. He focuses just over her shoulder.

“I think…no, I know it. I know I am. I think. And it’s so stupid not to mention quite impossible but it’s there and it’s happened and it’s _happening_ and it’s going on --, and I’m confused, I’m not thinking right, I’m certainly not sleeping right, and I’m not _complaining_ \--, I’m _not_ , but I can’t control it, and if I don’t say this now, tomorrow may be too late! I can’t --, it’s just, isn’t this how you always told me it would feel?”

“How what would feel?” Molly reaches for a Hobnob and takes a bite.

“Love.”

Molly can only blink and move her mouth against the Hobnob, the chocolate sticking to her bottom lip.

“Margaret Jane Lestrade, if you’re going to stare at me, at least have the common decency to put that fucking biscuit down.”

“Sorry!” she exclaims still partially hypnotised by Sherlock’s admission. That was definitely unexpected. “Sorry,” she apologises again and puts the fucking biscuit down. She folds her palms against her stomach. The baby kicks at them, so she puts her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and takes a deep breath. “Well, who is it? Is it Victor? He’s quite fit!”

“What?!” Sherlock squawks. “Victor Trevor?”

“How romantic! You’ve been friends for ages, that’s the best kind of partnership, I think. Reminds me of a certain Detective Inspector and a certain Medical Examiner,” Molly muses with a goofy smile and a wink. “This is fantastic! Sherlock, what are you --?! Sit down!”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and half-lowers himself back to his seat. He keeps his arms out stiff, not entirely convinced.

“What am I missing, Sherlock?” Molly crosses her arms like she does when she means it. “And so help me, if you make me run after you, I will call Greg and you won’t see daylight for a week or get to set foot in my lab ever again.”

Sherlock settles all the way down into his chair again and glances an apology up at her through his dark lashes. She nods. It’s their way.

He clears his throat. “I keep thinking about his hair and his voice and how much I want to know things about him. And when he’s not around --” Sherlock explains to the table between them holding a hand in front of his chest.

“That pulling feeling?” she suggests. He nods ardently with wide eyes. “Yeah, that sounds about right. When you smell him on you and you’ll to anything to stay in that place where it’s only the two of you?” More nodding and maybe a growing blush across the apples of his cheeks. Molly grins. “Sounds like love to me.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

She sips her tea. “Fate? Like, destiny? Soulmates? That kind of thing?” Sherlock just shrugs his bony shoulders as he reaches for his own mug. He really does need more sun. There’s something to be said for the vampire look, but as the recent blush fades, she can map the arteries and veins of his neck through his skin, he’s so pale. A vitamin supplement or five wouldn’t kill him either.

Molly thinks about it, idly petting the bulge under the t-shirt she’d stolen from Greg’s side of the wardrobe.

“I don’t know, yeah, I think. Yeah, I guess I do,” she tightens her ponytail. “That thing when you’re together that just, you’ve known each other all along and that part of you that had been so…” she mimes her head exploding into jazz hands and sticks her tongue out before continuing, “just relaxes because you know they’re the right one.”

She may as well have just slapped Sherlock square in the face for the look he’s giving her. He stares at her in that bone-sawing way of his and her heart speeds up a bit. It’s different somehow, Molly knows. He’s…serious, more serious than Sherlock has ever been about anything or anyone in their time as friends. Sherlock lets out an enormous sigh and leans back in his chair hitting his shoulders sharply against it. “Oh fuck, Sherlock. He’s the right one?” chirps Molly and shields her smile behind her hand.

The beautiful purple shirt strains across Sherlock’s chest, very close to bursting its poor, defenceless buttons. His grey eyes flash at her from across the table, realising and it’s so lovely to watch, lovely like the dawn watching Sherlock put pieces together. He breathes; exhales, inhales.

“I know it more than I’ve known anything in my entire life,” he nearly whispers.

“Then what are you waiting for?” Molly supresses her smile so hard, it’s hurting her face.

“It’s not…” Sherlock trails off. “It’s complicated,” Sherlock finishes breaking his trance and lifting his warm cup to his lips. And pensive, professional Sherlock Holmes the infamous oil painter and occasional Scotland Yard consultant is back in her kitchen with his gigantic coat and disapproving gaze.

“Oh, Sherlock, we all do silly things. Just tell him how you feel,” advises Molly and brushes the crumbs of her third Hobnob from her disappearing lap. “It’s not that difficult. You’ve seen all the films.” He rolls his eyes at her.

“Not by choice.”

“Nonsense,” she says scooting back from the table giving herself a wide berth, probably wider than is actually necessary. “Help me up so we can go watch another one in the bedroom. Nora Ephron. We’ll take notes. Strategize.” He gets up and balances her gently by the elbows.

“I’ve work to do, I’m afraid. Perhaps another time,” Sherlock hums in his velvety I’m-completely-and-totally-lying-you-silly-bitch voice. Molly is intimately familiar with that voice.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she giggles as they walk to the bedroom (he walks; she more toddles, side to side like a giant goose), her head resting on his shoulder. In the back of her mind, Molly wonders if he’ll miss these little moments between them especially once the baby comes and she goes back to work. She knows she definitely will. And now that Sherlock has someone? Molly swallows and shoves those feelings down as they pass through the doorway, Sherlock steering her expertly to avoid hitting the frame.

“Now _that_ is nonsense,” he says and helps her into bed. “I’ll call you soon.”

“See? Terrible liar.”

“My lying would be a bit more grandiose. Like the face I’ll make when Lestrade surprises me by naming the baby after me.” His eyebrows fly up and his mouth falls open in false shock complete with delicate fingers touching his breastbone. Molly laughs.

“What if it’s a girl?”

“Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.”

“Fuck off,” Molly scoffs and kisses him goodbye on his ridiculous cheekbone.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock sits in his big leather chair, his skinny legs tucked beneath him, staring at a blank canvas with a clean palette heavy in his lap. He can feel the heat of the thirteen completed pieces leaning behind him as if each of them were really him, really breathing, really John upsetting the hairs on the back of his neck. He taps his index finger against his bottom lip and closes his eyes.

_Do I always have to be asleep?_ he wonders silently. _I want to see you._

“Come see me, then, you prat.”

Sherlock whips his head around. John smirks his flirtatious smirk and they stand in his bedroom with its green _825 vert cadmium clair light green with blanc de titane to dilute dilute to 815 vert oxide de chrome chrome green inorganic compound first produced in 1838, stable structure, be specific blend it into spring but soft not pastel no god no, but a respectable green, calm a whisper of green shh shh don’t shout green_ walls and lamplight. He’s wearing another wonderfully obscene jumper and a pair of jeans that make his short legs look longer. His small feet are bare and pale.

“Am I asleep?” Sherlock asks sounding more timid than he has since childhood.

“I don’t approve, Sherlock. At all,” admonishes John in a stern voice. It wavers just enough to let Sherlock know while he’s mostly serious, there’s still affection there.

_Is there? Is that affection?_

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he confesses. “I had to see you. I had something to say to you.”

“Drugging yourself to sleep, though? Bit not good.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I don’t care.”

“ _I_ care.” John crosses his arms.

Sherlock imagines him in that same position in his desert-sand uniform, face utterly genuine beneath his helmet, quietly, respectfully dressing down a soldier in his unit that dared step out of line. Worry, anxiety, compassion, expectation, disappointment and sincerity -- they’re all there. He cares.

“Do you?”

“You know I do. I know how you think. I know you,” John answers stepping towards him. The whole of Sherlock’s skin stands on end reaching for John like a blade of grass toward the first rays of sun. It’s a challenge not to move.

“How do you know me, John?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“Well, do you care or don’t you?” Sherlock smiles and closes the gap.

Kissing John and not just being kissed by John, is much better, Sherlock thinks, for a number of reasons. The primary of which is tasting that little element of shock that explodes into his mouth right before John starts kissing him back. Their tongues meet smooth and natural, and it’s all so consuming.

Sherlock feels everything: the stretch of his skin against John’s hands, the lurch of his stomach as it twists and flips, the blood pounding from his toes to his eyebrows -- _everything_. John’s lips are soft and getting fuller especially when Sherlock sucks on them. Bending down to accommodate this shorter man, Sherlock finds he doesn’t mind it in the slightest. In fact, he rather enjoys the angles he can achieve and how simple it is to tip John’s mouth up while he cradles John’s skull in his hands. Sherlock also rather enjoys when John takes the initiative and pays close attention to his sensitive neck.

“You _ahh---_ , you’re wearing too many clothes,” Sherlock gasps when John starts licking near his ear, the point of John’s tongue fitting perfectly into the hollow his clenching jaw and working throat make. Then his agile doctor’s hands begin undoing the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt.

“Wait, wait!” pants Sherlock. “Yours first, I can’t stand it,” and he pulls John’s jumper and shirt off in one go.

John laughs, his hair sticking up every which way, and unhooks the last few buttons until he can open the shirt entirely and place his palms flat against Sherlock’s abdomen. The silk blend falls from Sherlock’s shoulders to the floor.

“Where have you been, hmmm?” John asks softly as his hands roam, dragging up and down Sherlock’s hard torso. Sherlock can’t control the tremors that zing beneath his skin from the rush of contact. John steps closer and Sherlock’s breath hitches when John’s soft fingers brush over his nipples. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.” He nuzzles into Sherlock’s neck again, alternating between hot tonguing kisses and abrasive little nips with his teeth.

“Wor- _ahh,_ _working_ ,” Sherlock grits out leaning close to John’s ear. “I’m sorry, I had to.” He kneads his hands into John’s strong back, carefully avoiding the double-sided scar on his left shoulder. Sherlock kisses John’s reddening ear and lays his lips against it. “They’re all for you,” He kisses the ear again and moves back to John’s mouth. “They’re all for you,” he repeats.

John groans deep and rocks his hardness into Sherlock’s upper thigh. Sherlock curves into it, wanting to feel it, wanting the heat of him to burn through the fabric of their trousers and straight down into his skin. He wants it to scar him forever.

It’s never been like this before. Never. Not with anyone. This incontestable connection, the safety of it, and the raw, deliriously human palpitation of it -- Sherlock can’t breathe. _Dyspnoea from the Latin dys meaning not and pnein to breathe, shortness of breath often paired with chest pain, top five most common complaints at any A &E, shortness of breath, can’t breathe, lungs compressed, too tight can’t expand can’t expand, like being underwater with all this pressure, asthma pneumonia cardiac ischemia psychogenic origin, I’m dying, he’s killing me, I’d die right now right fucking now with his breath in my mouth and his hands in my hair, oh god he’s killing me it’s beautiful he’s beautiful, this is it I’m dying, pressure the ratio of force over a certain area and any area that is me is being crushed into him into him we’re together, pressure, force, breath can’t breathe, I’m breathing we’re kissing I’m breathing I can’t breathe_

Sherlock writhes and opens his eyes. They’re on his bed now, John covering him like the duvet that’s now on the floor. John will not stop touching him; his hair, his armpits, his pelvis, his calves. Sherlock scratches down John’s back and swallows each and every one of John’s dark moans. John works Sherlock’s trousers open and grips him through the thin silk of his pants. Sherlock has no chance of keeping his hips still.

“ _John_ ,” he purrs in a deep rumble and tightens his arms around John’s shoulders. His fingers slide in the sweat.

“What?” John’s breath is harsh but his words are so gentle. “Tell me.”

“John, I…” _Affection, to affect another, affect meaning change, he changed me, I am changing for him I have been affected, affection, affection love, dopamine oxytocin serotonin vasopressin, AVP retains water and constricts blood vessels smaller smaller, it’s a flood, there’s not enough room, this is it, it’s adrenaline monoamines produced in the central nervous system, fight or flight fight or flight, this isn’t fear this is high, love this is love his face his hair his clothing less so, that jumper 357 bleu outremar ultramarine out of the sea all wrong all wrong, if ever there was one built for the land it would be John in that stupid jumper, the threads are too fat, do it anyway paint it the wrong blue, make them see, it’s all wrong on him it’s all wrong and it’s all fine, blend and weave, stipple, it’s cloth move the brush move, that bleu against his skin, ridiculous, doesn’t he know?, he doesn’t care that’s what he’s wearing he’s wearing it it’s not wearing him and who cares love?, oh god, he’s five six seven jaune de Naples, he’s 28 or, gold, so much gold he’s golden, love you, love you, oh_ “ -- Fuck me.”

“Oh god, _yes_ ,” sighs John and kisses his lips again. He sets to work pulling the rest of their clothes off starting with Sherlock’s trousers, a few seams popping as he rounds an ankle too fast. They giggle like idiots when Sherlock finally kicks free but stop when John catches the offending joint and lifts it to his lips in apology.

“You should be apologising to my trousers,” Sherlock smirks. John shakes his head.

“I’m not sorry about the trousers,” he replies glancing at him from under his light lashes. “I’m sorry it took me so long to kiss you here.” John punctuates it with another kiss to the protrusion of his ankle. “And here.” His shin. “And here,” he works his way up Sherlock’s leg to his knee, his inner thigh, “And here. And here.”

Sherlock blinks very hard and forces his eyes back open watching John, watching the way his hand follows his mouth rubbing the kisses into Sherlock’s skin, the way he places Sherlock’s foot back down on the mattress, the way his muscles move in tempered harmony. John naked is unexpectedly graceful, deliberate and focused and _look at his eyes bleu de Prusse never stop looking at me_

John, with his mesmerising scar and his sinewy thighs, leans and hovers over Sherlock, cupping his hand along the side of Sherlock’s face. They stare. Sherlock is more naked than he’s ever been, he knows, breathing through his mouth.

He is defenceless and instead of panic, he is riding wave after wave of _it’s John it’s him_ _ **love**_ _he’s right there right here with me and wants to be, oxytocin the_ _ **love**_ _hormone excreted by the pituitary gland increases feelings of safety and_ _ **trust,**_ _the bonding hormone_ _ **I’m his**_ _and he knows it we know it, he wants me to be he wants me_.

Sherlock exhales and realises that this is the only place he wants to be anymore, in the space between his mattress and John, his marvel of sleeping pills and fate. He’s been a fool to think otherwise.

It must mean something. It must mean that something here is right.

Sherlock rolls his pelvis, his legs falling more open while he licks his way into John’s mouth again. John’s left hand winds its way down and down, coming to rest on the jut of his hip bone. John laughs against his lips.

“What?” Sherlock asks with a twitch of his hips. John’s hand on his hip feels like a magnet pulling Sherlock’s cock closer and closer though neither is actually moving.

“You’re too bloody long,” the shorter man grumbles in a playful huff. He pecks Sherlock on the cheek and slips lower until his shoulders are holding Sherlock’s knees apart and his breath ghosts against Sherlock’s cock.

Moving quickly, Sherlock grips the base of his aching prick and slams his eyes closed. It’s too much. It’s too good. His heart bangs against his chest in protest but eventually, his orgasm retreats and Sherlock can open his eyes once more.

The moment he does is the exact moment John brushes two slippery fingers against his hole and presses another kiss against his ticklish inner thigh. “You’re incredible, you know that, right?” John says reverently. Sherlock starts to shake his head, but stops when he looks at John. “You’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, Sherlock.”

Sherlock laces the fingers of John’s unoccupied hand through his own and throws his head back when John finally pushes inside. Making a loose fist with his other hand and stroking his cock occasionally, Sherlock feeds the flames of his desire but keeps the inevitable inferno at bay. John’s being so careful, it’s lovely.

“Jesus _Christ_ , Sherlock, you --, you’re _so hot_ inside.” John’s blunt fingers curl and stretch Sherlock’s walls steady and gentle _like a good doctor I’m the patient I’m patient I’m trying oh god failing impatient patient Dr Watson em dee, fuck fuck_ _ **fuck**_

“You do that to me,” Sherlock says and strokes his cock as slowly as he possibly can, tugging the foreskin up and over the head then down again. Sherlock tilts his neck into his pillow.

Suddenly he feels gentle breath against the hand on his cock. Sherlock cranes to look down just as John’s tongue snakes out to lick under his fingers at the space where Sherlock’s balls meet his shaft.

The groan that booms out of him shakes them both.

John adds another finger and keeps his mouth moving, tongue darting in between Sherlock’s fingers, lips brushing against the hot flesh of his cock only to dart away just as quickly. It’s agonising, it’s exquisite, it’s slow and it’s thrilling. Sherlock grinds down on John’s completely wicked, torturous hand.

John is building him brick by brick, waiting for the perfect moment to topple him, bring him to the edge and push him over. Sherlock’s hips roll and roll but John stays with him, keeps spreading his blunt fingers and turning his wrist, keeps finding his prostate effortlessly _well, he is a doctor after all isn’t he jesus fuck_ _ **fuckfuck fuck**_.

Sherlock thrusts up into his tighter fist. He can’t help it, he _can’t_. John pulls his hand out, untangles Sherlock’s other hand from his own and grips Sherlock’s thighs bending his knees up to align on either side of his hips.

“Is this what you wanted?” The head of John’s slippery cock nudges against Sherlock’s body. Sherlock shakes his head, swallows and rocks towards it, sliding the swollen head between his cheeks. Shuddering, John bites his lower lip. It’s the sexiest thing Sherlock has ever seen.

“I need it,” Sherlock huffs. “Get in me, John, please, _please._ ” _Get in me get in me I’m ready be in me I need it get in me John, John please_ John pushes forward and in and in and _in_. Sherlock’s hole pulses beyond his control.

“Oh Christ, _Sherlock,_ ” John breathes and his short torso drops farther forward so Sherlock sets his nails against John’s chest. The muscles are hard but the skin is soft and reactive and pink streaks appear and lace down and down. Sherlock locks his legs around John’s waist, his feet resting on the curve of his arse, long toes digging into the flesh like wet sand.

John breathes as if he’s running and has Sherlock’s thighs in a vice grip trying to keep himself still. His knuckles are all white with effort.

“Come on, John, oh _god_ _fuck me_.” _fuck me_ _ **fuckmefuckme**_ Sherlock tries to thrust up, to move, to fuck himself on John but there’s no traction to be gained. A frustrated whine crackles in his throat then John rescues him again; a single powerful drive that hits just so, _jaune primaire yellow yellow yellow jaune primare god it’s perfect he’s perfect bright bright light I can’t see oh fuck oh god do it again_ , slow and deep and so fucking hard. Sherlock cries out when he does it again and again, again and again and again.

“You --!” gasps John as his hair jerks, falling back against his wet forehead with each bruising punch.

“ _You,_ ” Sherlock replies, bracing his palms flat against the wall. “It’s _you,_ John. I didn’t know. But it’s always been you, John Watson.”

John bends lower, rearranging them together and finds a quicker rhythm. Sherlock can reach him now and digs both hands in John’s hair, lifting his head and kissing him kisses that don’t break, that stretch and grow, with lips and tongue and teeth and stolen breath. It’s messy. It’s glorious.

John hooks an arm around Sherlock’s leg, pushing it towards his good shoulder and Sherlock moans into his mouth. Sherlock lets his other leg fall wide landing against the bed with a thump. He pushes against John, moves in small circles, bigger ones, while John sucks on his tongue. John’s hand finds its way back to Sherlock’s foot, holding it heel to heel, fingers spread along the arch and Sherlock presses down against it like an accelerator, his hips rising higher when John thrusts in again. The clench is nearly unbearable.

“Jesus _fucking Christ_ ,” John groans while Sherlock mouths below his jaw, his neck, tongue chasing his Adam’s apple.

“Come on,” Sherlock whispers quiet. “It’s for you, take me, it’s for you.” He’s never wanted this before, to give himself so entirely to someone else, to be obliterated. Sherlock is disintegrating and willing to do so. With each smooth movement of their hips, he knows it deeper and deeper and deeper:

This is what the opening of the heart feels like and it’s not easy or pleasant, more like being cleaved with a large, rectangular knife. This is being laid bare, laid waste. This is the only thing left in him to give and it feels small and not enough but John is finding him, filling him in like an unfinished drawing.

John is the answer. John is the purpose. In a thousand lifetimes, in a thousand afterlives, John Watson is the fixed point, Sherlock knows. He _knows_. But…

He sees the finish line and doesn’t want to reach it. He tries to hold on, to slow it all down but John is too good, too fucking good.

John pulls back as he moves his hand from Sherlock’s foot to his neglected cock, wrapping it tight and pumping. The onslaught is terrible and wonderful and Sherlock feels himself fraying like cloth, like muscle shredding in a bullet’s path, like the very fabric of space and time is coming apart within him with only John holding it all together.

Uncontrollable high-pitched keens claw their way from Sherlock’s throat while John kisses him again and he feels John twitch inside him. John leans folding them tighter together. Sherlock clings then runs his hands down John’s sweaty back, his arse, the backs of his thighs and oh god it’s happening oh god it’s now and -- _116 blanc de titane, titanium white, white, nothing, air oxygen nitrogen, carbon and water, sky, nothing, nothing, him him carbon and water John, John John oh god John,_ _ **John**_

Sherlock wakes in his big chair, a cold cup of tea by his face and both hands tucked into his trousers. Pulling them out, he sits up shuddering in the stale air of the flat. His hands are dry and stiff with renewed bloodflow.

The daylight has gone and the light over the cooker that he never turns off glows its weak green glow. He turns around and his paintings look back at him, still and silent.

A stabbing burn rips through his shoulder and Sherlock cries out, clutching at it.

“John?” He nearly strangles on the word.

No reply.

The pain pulses. _675 vermillon François deep muscle nerves misfiring deep tearing oh god shut up oh fuck of course it’s red how tiresome how predictable how trite oh f --_

“ _Fuck!_ ” he cries and doubles over. “John?!”

Nothing.

Sherlock's vision blurs when involuntary tears start to gather in the corners of his eyes. His shoulder throbs beneath his hand. He can feel each thump of his heart through it. Lurching for air he can’t catch, Sherlock sobs silently. His kneecaps strike the carpet in front of his chair.

Like a circuit, the pain radiates, stinging up and down the length of his arm too fast for Sherlock to even attempt to measure it. His hand tingles and spasms, fingers stiffening out of his control. He’s dizzy.

“John? John, _please!_ ” Sherlock begs.

Silence.

And like someone cuts every single string, he slumps to the ground in a heap.

 


	4. Chapter 4

“She sent a car?” his brother scoffs stepping out onto the pavement. He’s in the all-black meaning he wishes to exude a darkness he doesn’t actually have, but at least he’s out of the house. Progress. It had been rather a challenge convincing him to attend Irene’s event, but some old-fashioned public adoration and damp London air will do him good. One can only survive on cold tea, paint fumes, and the praise of Mrs Hudson for so long.

Mycroft squints and studies him.

Something’s different.

Sherlock’s eyes look bluer in the fading sunlight even without the aid of a coloured shirt. It’s also possible that they are deeper set than they normally are. His face is relaxed and alive. He looks…it’s not happiness, it’s _not._ Possibly satisfaction? Mycroft wants so badly to write it off to the fact that Sherlock is done with his pieces (and they are indeed stunning as per usual), but his conscience won’t let him. A fog grows in the pit of his stomach.

He slides along the leather seat after Sherlock and closes the door before the chauffer can reach it. The partition whirs then clicks when it’s all the way up.

“Oh for god’s sake, just ask me,” Sherlock snaps pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s physically painful watching you ruminate.”

“What have you taken?”

“Gee, Sherlock, you look well-rested and accomplished, almost as if you’d just finished a project I, myself, deemed impossible. Clearly you must be abusing narcotics.”

“I don’t sound like that.”

“I think I’m a better judge of that than you. And no, to answer your question, I’ve not taken anything other than the sleep aid we agreed upon, you officious cun --”

“--I don’t ask to upset you, brother mine.” Mycroft speaks to the roof of the car to keep from rolling his eyes. “That is never my intent.”

“Of course it isn’t!” Sherlock blasts back, levelling his eyes at him. “You’re just altruistically protecting your livelihood. And why shouldn’t you? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Parading me around? Drumming up business? Christ.”

“I will never apologise for being concerned, Sherlock.”

“Trust me, of that I am vastly aware.” And with that he turns his face away and stares out the window as grey London creeps past.

The rest of the ride is silent. It’s in everyone’s best interest. On his good days, Mycroft’s younger brother is a difficult little shit. And on days when he is expected to be out in public (and rather obviously nervous about it), Sherlock is insufferable. He’s never overtly aggressive per se, but Mycroft wouldn’t put it past him tonight.

The car stops smoothly despite the rain. Sherlock’s door cracks open and the chauffer hovers with an umbrella.

“This is an alley,” states Sherlock.

“I was instructed by Ms Adler to present you at the back of the venue, sir,” manages the chauffer with only a slight waver in his voice. Mycroft cannot help the pleased smirk that always blooms across his face when something as insignificant as a declarative statement from either Holmes makes underlings quake. True power is indeed the perception of power.

“Marvellous,” Sherlock rises and buttons his enormous wool coat. He pops the collar while Mycroft crawls out after him. He takes his longest strides to catch up and walk slightly in front of Sherlock. Reaching the door, he raps on it with the handle of his own unused umbrella.

“Ah, the Holmes boys! Finally!” coos Irene once they are inside what appears to be an over-decorated coat room. She looks smashing as usual in this year’s McQueen, as bold as ever in her towering stilettos and tight up-do.

“What is the meaning of all this?” Mycroft inquires, sneering down at her even at her modified height. “What are we doing back here?”

“This is ridiculous,” says Sherlock striding past them all and through the doors, following the annoying thump of what must be positively deafening music in the next room. Mycroft stays with him better this time but nearly topples them both over when Sherlock stops dead in his tracks.

Flashbulbs.

“Well, I’d have hated to ruin the surprise,” Irene says softly as she slithers behind them.

The opening night gala for _Suicide of Fake Genius_ is in full swing.

Mycroft’s blood runs cold in an instant. He glances at Sherlock. He’s still, but the veins in his neck are a bit more prominent and his nostrils flare. Not good.

Irene’s smile grows wider and more dazzling as the party swirls on before them. “Oh, did I forget to tell you? I’m curating their show too. Or I suppose ‘curator’ isn’t the right term. ‘Patron’ may be more fitting. Anyhow, Jim and Bast have been absolutely gagging to get your thoughts on their new show.” Irene smiles and smiles for picture after picture. Press agents start yelling at Sherlock to turn this way and that, but Mycroft can barely hear them over the din of rage thrumming in his ears like radio static. He grabs Irene by her ivory elbow and pushes her back through the door of the coat room.

“Explain,” Mycroft commands stonily.

“You disappoint me, Mycroft,” she says brushing her fingers along her elbow as if his touch somehow made her unclean.

“Do I?” It’s almost a growl. He glares as much as his propriety will allow.

“I can’t just sit around for years waiting for your brother to paint pictures of royals, now can I? A girl has got to eat.” She crosses her arms. From the width of her forearms, her previous statement proves false, but Mycroft dismisses it. Petty.

Irene continues while she adjusts her jewellery. “You’re also failing to see the bigger picture. This is better business for both of us -- double the controversy, double the sales. Now wasn’t it generous of me to include you?”

“I’ll report you.”

“You could do, yes,” Irene laughs. “As of this moment, I am employed by three galleries in one manner or other and I sit on the boards of a dozen others. Let me know when you find a sympathetic ear.” She produces a tube of lipstick from her top and smoothly applies a layer on top of the one already there. It’s like blood against snow or a fresh, dripping wound. How fitting.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an event to attend. And so do you.”

He stands in front of her, fingers tightening around his umbrella. She bats her eyes at him slowly, completely unintimidated.

“Sales, Mr Holmes. Sales. Focus. Anything to keep baby brother working and away from the needles, right?” She kisses his cheek with a loud smack and returns to the party, clicking away in her preposterous heels.

Wiping the smudge of lipstick from his face, Mycroft breathes and counts and counts and counts until he can follow suit. The party rages.

The woman has gone.

The press has gone.

And mostly, Sherlock has gone.

Fuck.

 

* * *

 

If he had planned better, Sherlock realises while he sits on the lid of the closed toilet of the locked bathroom, he could have done this before he’d left Baker Street and therefore not have to endure the tediousness of both the performance of the injection and the fucking ringing in his ears. Happily, he did plan enough to bring a fresh needle and supply along. And with Mycroft dragging Irene Adler off into the ether, who is he to deny such an auspicious opportunity?

He recaps the needle and places it back into the inner pocket of his jacket. Mustn’t leave evidence. Mycroft would never forgive such sloppiness. Sherlock sighs and tents his fingers under his nose. The press had been easy enough to ignore. When one’s persona establishes one as being an impassive arsehole, it’s rather easier to scowl, say nothing, and walk away.

Walking away from Moriarty without spitting in his face will undoubtedly require more finesse. The pieces caught in his peripheral vision, bright, garish, _multi-media_ pieces for god’s sake, are enough to send him screaming for the loo anyway. Some people really will celebrate anything.

He rises and looks at himself in the mirror while he washes his hands. He does look rested, but that’s mostly due to the drug-induced stupor he’s been administering on a daily basis. Uninterrupted sleep. Novel.

It is quite an effort to avoid John. But after picking himself up off the floor after their night together and feeling like his arm had been ripped from his body for the next three days, Sherlock would rather die than experience it again. Ever. He can’t take it.

Additionally, Sherlock’s mind is a traitor and like any villain, must be stopped by any means necessary. Left to its own devices it positively pines for John. It recalls the exact timbre of John’s voice, the exact pressure of John’s fingertips against his jaw, and the exact taste of bile that fills his mouth when his shoulder throbs.

The cocaine helps. John stays absent and Sherlock stays sane. Equilibrium. It’s no worse than it was before. He can still work. He’s fine. It’s all fine.

Damnit.

He clicks the lock over and opens the door. Jim Moriarty leans on the doorframe, dyed eyebrows shaped within an inch of their lives painted into an inquisitive curve.

“Wondered where you’d gone off to, my dear,” he lilts. “Those curls always look more trouble than they’re worth.” Jim reaches up and pulls the curl just above Sherlock’s eyebrow ever so gently and makes a mock-surprised face when it springs back into place. Sherlock slaps his hand away and glares.

“Well!” Jim remarks. “No reason to stop being a lady.”

“You’d know more than I,” Sherlock sneers and makes to shoulder past him. But he’s higher than he thought and Jim is easily able to shove him backwards and close the bathroom door behind them locking it with finality.

“Ooh no, Sherlock, a little unsteady on our feet, are we? Makes all the difference in the world when you get the dosage just a little bit wrong, doesn’t it?” Jim studies his own face in the mirror. “I can’t wait for big brother to put two and two together.”

His clothes are immaculate, the dark purple waistcoat clinging to his slim torso and the crisp white button up just so. Sherlock shakes his head hating himself for noticing and hating himself even more for admiring it. He stands tall, taller than Moriarty and takes a breath.

“I don’t know what other words to use than those I’ve used before,” Sherlock begins, “but no, James, I do not want to engage in any sort of rendezvous with you or with whatever you’re calling Moran, -- ”

“Bast when we’re working, Seb when he’s good, Colonel when he’s _really_ good,” Jim interjects. Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge it.

“No, I will not sell you any of my stash,” he continues, “And no, I will not fellate you over your work as there are fifty idiots right outside that door gagging for it and I haven’t the time nor the desire to join them. If you’ll excuse me,” Sherlock makes for the door. Jim blocks his way swaying his head from side to side like a raptor tasting the air. He is surprisingly adept at finding the cracks and slipping through.

“But I love hearing what you think!” His smile is wide and mocking. “It’s like hearing one of the old masters back from the dead drone on and on about how art nowadays is ruined, _ruined I tell you!_ ” he cackles. “And the way you hate me is so,” Jim pauses and inhales near Sherlock’s ear. “Sssssssssssssexy,” he finishes in a whisper so close to Sherlock’s neck that his skin prickles. Sherlock’s knees shake a bit.

“Mmmm?” Sherlock rumbles in his chest and glances down at Jim through half-open eyelids. He just barely parts his lips. “Is that so?”

Jim presses into him, cologne and all. His black eyes shine at him but before he can make his move, Sherlock reaches behind him, unlocks the door, and shoves both the door and the ridiculous little man out of his way. Stepping into the hallway, he adjusts his jacket and plans his escape. He would very much like to be home now. His stomach clenches.

“Who is he, then?!” Jim crows out behind him, clearly in the hallway now too judging by the echo. Sherlock keeps walking. “It can’t be true, what they’re saying. Not even you could stoop as low.”

He shouldn’t. It’s bait, plain and simple. But the cocaine speeds through his body and makes it impossible to ignore the impulse. Sherlock turns and narrows his eyes in the weak light. Jim stands imperiously, re-rolling the cuffs at his elbows.

“When Irene told me what you’d been doing, honestly, I couldn’t believe it. Then she showed me the slides. And the video. Oh yes, I’ve seen it. The ‘great’ Sherlock Holmes spending months in his dingy old flat painting portraits of a dead soldier. How lovely, how _patriotic_ , I thought.”

“Shut up, Moriarty,” Sherlock’s voice is so deep, he feels it in the bottom of his feet. He’s looming over Jim without registering his own movements. He closes his eyes -- John’s face flashes and Sherlock’s hand tremors.

“No, that’s not _exactly_ what I said. I said, Irene, what the hell is Sherlock Holmes doing painting some dead, useless _nobody_ \--”

**# # # #**

Sherlock blinks against the bright overhead lights. _Began in the 1850s for this very purpose, colour rendition between 85 and 100 for maximum distinction between planes, homogenous light overhead light, maximum shadow dilution lights upon lights, and they’re so motherfucking bright._ It takes a moment to adjust. The smell of alcohol and iodine _iodine in ethanol thick streak of 505 jaune de Mars clean be specific_ sticks in his nostrils. Hospitals always have the same smell, but it’s never been so pungent. It burns through to his soft palate and down his throat. He raises a hand to his nose to save him inhaling any more of it when someone screams.

And screams. And screams.

The _sound_.

A sound that people are at once supposed to hear and not hear. Sound that necessitates a response, but also causes repulsion, warning others to stay away while reaching out for immediate attention. Sherlock covers his ears. There are no words -- just noise loud and layered and long. It’s private. Primal. _Stop stop stop I can’t I can’t_

It fades into sobbing and starts again like a siren wail. Sherlock’s stomach roils as his feet shuffle him closer. He knows that voice.

The faceless surgical team parts and it is only John on the table.

 _No, no, no don’t do this to me don’t make me see,_ Sherlock clenches his eyes closed, or tries to but they refuse to obey. John’s short hair is matted to his scalp with sweat and wet sand. Lines of tears streak through the dirt on his contorted face. His top is gone and his bare chest heaves too fast, much much too fast.

 _Hypovolemia, shock stage III? stage IV, significant trauma_ _**there’s a hole in his shoulder** _ _, gunshot wound_ _**what did it hit** _ _, two wounds entrance and bigger exit oh fuck, there’s no central line in, he’s the medic and they couldn’t help him_ _**, they’re supposed to help him** _ _he’s lost over 40% of his blood_ _**he’s losing it it’s everywhere** _ _it’s everywhere, extreme tachycardia his heartbeat is erratic erratic erratic_ _**John calm down I’m here** _ _oh god John, pronounced tachypnea from the Greek tachypnoea, rapid breathing rapid rapid rapid he can’t breathe oh god_ _**he can’t breathe** _

John’s navy eyes, wide and open and completely full of pain, dig into Sherlock’s. He screams around his dry, cracked lips. Sherlock reaches down and holds his face still, balancing forehead to forehead. John’s screaming makes his ears ring, his back teeth hurt.

“Shhh, shhh,” he tries to soothe him. He’s crap at it. “John, I’ve got you, you’re going to be okay, they’re going to help you, stop screaming.”

John sobs and Sherlock has to bend away to control his own breathing. He looks at the floor. _Made in the marrow, over 98% of oxygen is delivered through blood_ _ **blood**_ _690 lacque de Garance rose build build 903 violet bleu yes, keep it that way,_ _ **it’s getting brighter**_ _no bright with air no not scarlet, not crimson, bright red 675 vermillon François thick_ _ **no**_ _thick full of oxygen_ _ **why is it on the floor**_ _, so fresh it’s running not dripping, it’s running in streams in puddles_ _ **there’s a puddle**_ _, exsanguination blood loss, brighter it’s_ _ **arterial blood**_ _, oh god it’s from an artery_ _ **think!**_ _not about the colours you useless fuck_

Sherlock looks up and over, avoiding John’s eyes. There’s not much left to his other shoulder. He can see shards of bone and torn muscle and _why is there no pressure on it?! the subclavian no, axillary artery_ _ **he needs that**_ _artery away, carries oxygenated blood away from the heart to the body, no come back_ _ **come back**_ _put it all back_

The tear in the axillary artery beats in time with John’s irregular heart. Just a few centimetres to the side and the bullet would have missed it entirely. Then John would be okay. He’d have a scar and be back in London, but with enough physiotherapy and time he’d… But he fell backwards. He had no choice. John fell backwards.

Sherlock clutches at John’s face, his pale fingers looking positively pink on John’s cheeks. His skin has gone cold and hollow. Sherlock presses harder then releases. John’s capillaries are not refilling. There’s nothing left to fill them. “Please, John,” he begs.

“Sher--, Sherlock?” John whimpers back and tries to move. He can’t. Sherlock pets his face. “ _Please_ , Sherlock, let me live.”

Sherlock can only stare. In a second, John’s eyebrows relax from pleading to neutral. His face is slack, exhausted. And his eyes are so blue, a terrifying blue, not dark but flickering in the strong overhead light. The last blue they will ever be.

Sherlock sees the pain approaching in the crawl of his skin before John registers it, and John screams out all the remaining air in his lungs.

This time, Sherlock screams with him.

It pierces his own ears; so loud it cracks his usual baritone into jagged pieces. It comes from the roots of him, shakes every cell.

When he opens his eyes again, John is still staring. But Sherlock can see the artery pulse out of the corner of his eye. Once, twice, and then… _and then…_

**# # # #**

Floating, flying, falling -- they all feel the same and right now, Sherlock feels it whichever it is.

His legs are off the ground along with the bulk of his middle. When he opens his eyes, Jim’s face, red with angry veins popping out all over stares back and Sherlock’s fingers are losing sensation as they are wrapped around Jim’s flattening trachea. The sensation of flying (falling?) is primarily due to the fact that Mycroft is lifting him from their pile on the floor. Finally, his hearing engages once more and everything gives way.

Sherlock lets go of Jim and struggles to stand flat on his feet. Mycroft traps his arms to his sides in a grip that could bend metal. He can smell his brother’s sweat, see it gathering in his receding hairline ever so slightly.

“Goddamnit, get him the fuck off!” a voice coming from quite nearby Sherlock registers. The Louisiana twang makes him double-take as the other half of the Moriarty-Moran partnership scoops a sputtering Jim off the floor. His hair is shorn on one side and ridiculously long, multi-coloured stripes on the other. His round glasses are too young for his haggard face. “Are you okay, boss -- I mean, Jim? Jesus Christ, look what he did to you!”

Sherlock can’t help but laugh. Mycroft’s grip tightens and Sherlock takes the hint. He will not keep his lips from curling up, however, try as he may. Mycroft turns them both around and shoves him toward the exit, Sherlock walking quickly in front of Mycroft.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going, Holmes?” yells Moran. The crowd is silent, but their cameras are not. Sherlock keeps his eyes down. He hears coughing and swearing that can only be from Jim.

“I will end you, Sherlock!” Jim shrieks. “I will _burn_ _you_ for this!”

The press clambers toward Jim and Sebastian, shouting question on top of question. Only a few have followed Mycroft and Sherlock but they quickly realise it’s ill-advised. The car sits idling, back door open, and before he can protest, Mycroft heaves Sherlock inside, climbs in, and slams the door. The tyres make a very satisfying screech as they speed off around the corner.

They don’t get far. London traffic is nothing if not reliably present.

Mycroft speaks very slowly. “There is no excuse good enough --”

Sherlock doesn’t hear the rest because he’s up and out of the car, running for the nearest Tube stop.

 

* * *

 

Victor William Michael Trevor, Agent of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service is not someone who is easily surprised. He’s been to Syria and Russia _and_ Afghanistan, for fuck’s sake. But when Sherlock Holmes appears in his parlour, soaking wet and shivering, and all he husks out is “I need you,” well, to say he could have been knocked him over with a feather is the understatement of the fucking year.

They have made it to the bedroom ( _sans vêtements, merci beaucoup_ ) and Victor is currently watching Sherlock trace lines down his stomach with long fingersfrom where he’s draped half across Victor. _Beautiful bastard with his cat eyes and that mouth, Jesus fuck. He should charge me just for looking._

Victor turns Sherlock’s chin towards his and kisses him slowly. Sherlock’s fingers don’t stutter, they just dip lower, teasing Victor’s thickening cock. Victor holds Sherlock’s face, gently stroking his smooth cool cheeks and starts to turn them over when Sherlock pushes back until Sherlock is completely on top of him still kissing his mouth deeper and wetter. _Oh, that’s what you want, then?_

Flat on his back, Victor wiggles beneath Sherlock until he can spread his legs, Sherlock settling between them, and rests his knees on either side of Sherlock’s hips. Victor pulls out of the kiss with a loud smack.

“You know we’re eventually going to talk about those trackmarks, right?” he breathes. He pushes Sherlock’s hair back and back, petting him. By looking at him, one would normally presume that Sherlock’s hair is coarse when in fact, if he could, Victor would manufacture bed sheets from it. Soft where he looks abrasive and poisonous when he looks most placid -- bloody typical.

Silver-blue eyes just blink at him. Sherlock’s breath comes out of him in little puffs. Victor kisses him again, soft, lips to lips, making him slow down. _We have all the time in the world, you silly git._ Sherlock drops his forehead to Victor’s shoulder. _Oh not that ag--_

This time, he kisses the shoulder and slides his tongue back towards Victor’s neck and up to nip at his ear; the ear he knows is magical and sends all of Victor’s blood on a determined drive south. _Ffffuck_

“Jesus, Sherlock,” sighs Victor. “What’s got into you?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock growls between kisses. “This is what you like, isn’t it?”

“Oh god, yes, but --” Victor stops talking when Sherlock rears back and looks at him. He looks…different. Not necessarily a bad different, but just different. _He’s high, you moron, you’ve had him like this before_ His eyes are a bit wetter or maybe the set of his mouth? Victor has trouble telling exactly which because Sherlock has wrapped his fist around Victor’s cock and is rippling his grip sending shockwaves of pleasure through him, warping every one of his senses.

He hears the familiar gurgle and snap of the lube bottle and lifts his hips, completely shameless. _You fucking tart, Trevor, oh god don’t stop touching me_.

When Sherlock finally did decide to give up everything else to pursue this oil painting lark, Victor remembers being just a bit sad because his friend had been good at so many other things. To limit him to visual art alone seemed cruel. Especially when Sherlock has comprehensive control of both hands at all times and can move all of his fingers independently _the absolute shit_. He would have made such a fine musician. Violin or piano or --

Oh yes, very fine indeed as shown by the perfect circles he’s rubbing onto Victor’s prostate while maintaining an entirely different rhythm stroking his cock. Victor melts and melts. He fists his hands in the sheets, mashing his lips together to keep from screaming.

He watches Sherlock, observes him. His brow is knit in concentration and his cock is redder than Victor’s seen it in months. _Probably years, god, it’s been too long, he’s so fucking good, look at his face, look at his cock, Jesus Christ it looks like it tastes_. The foreskin is retracted and the head shines with precome, ready and waiting, waiting for Victor to give in and stretch just a little wider. A chuckle rumbles from Sherlock and Victor opens his eyes _when did I close them?_

“Look at yourself,” Sherlock whispers with a smile.

Without knowing it, Victor has started to ride Sherlock’s three fingers, rolling his hips and pushing up with his feet flat on the bed. His face heats with embarrassment.

“Can’t help it, can’t help it,” he gasps. “I love it when you fuck me.” Sherlock hmmm’s another laugh and brushes harder against his prostate making Victor’s thighs jump. “Amazing!” he exclaims and Sherlock does it again. “Fantastic!” And again. “God, you’re _incredible_ , you know that, right?”

Victor doesn’t hear Sherlock rearrange himself and find a condom as he’s presently trying not to die from the loss of sensation. But soon enough, Sherlock is back and lovely and finally, deeply inside _it’s never the same twice oh god, it’s fucking unfair._ Sherlock stills, letting them readjust, kissing the sweat from Victor’s forehead.

Victor hugs his back, tucks his chin into the crook of Sherlock’s neck setting his teeth against skin, staving off orgasm or sobbing -- he’s not sure which. Sherlock can’t see him like this, it’s too much _he’s too much, it’s been so long and now, and now --_ Sherlock thrusts his hips, snapping their bodies together. _Jesus, Jesus, oh Christ Jesus fuck._

Sherlock lets out a moan. Victor tightens around him and he does it again, their skin singing with contact and sweat. It punches the air from both of them. Victor smiles and nuzzles his ear. “No-one else hears you like this, do they?” he strains to speak over their breath. “No, you don’t let them. Oh Christ, Sherlock, yes, fuck me, _fuck me_.”

Drawing out and then driving back in slow but powerful and relentless, Sherlock does. Pressure and heat build inside Victor as Sherlock gets deeper and deeper with each smooth pound. It’s taking forever _it’s going too fast_ and Victor’s hips rock higher and higher always behind, always chasing behind.

He grips Sherlock’s arms, his fingers sliding in the sweat down taut triceps. It’s good. It’s so good. No, no, it’s not good. It’s fucking _transcendent_ when they’re like this, when they’re both on the same wavelength. Victor breathes in through his nose and shivers on the exhale because Sherlock is stroking his cock again.

“Sherlock --, I’m gonna --,” whines Victor as his orgasm starts to flare.

“Come for me, come for me--”

“-- I’m _coming, oh fuck!_ ” Victor’s body compresses then explodes into a rush so fierce, he has no choice but to endure it. Like standing open-palmed in a hurricane. Like being hit by lightning. He can’t control his voice, his limbs, nothing. Nothing is his. It’s all for Sherlock. He is Sherlock’s.

“Come for me, oh god, I’ve missed you, I love you,” Sherlock says with his face pressed against Victor’s cheek.

_I love you too, Sherlock, I love you too. I’ve been trying to tell you, to show you. You never let me tell you. Never. Not once. Don’t pass out, Trevor! Fight it! Don’t pass out! Say it, say it, say it, don’t pass out!_

“I --, I --,”

“I love you, John.”

_\-- What?_

When Victor wakes, he’s alone in his bed with the sheets pulled up over him. _Fucking lazy fucking libido._ His arse and back twinge a bit when he stretches to grab his phone from the nightstand.

It’s early. No messages.

“Sherlock?” he calls. No response. “Sherlock?!” he tries louder.

Nearly tripping over his sheets, he gets up and searches his flat not even stopping to find pants. Both guest rooms are empty, both baths, downstairs, the kitchen, the study.

Sherlock is gone.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock jerks awake, the final remnants of last night’s cocaine tingling out through his fingertips and a fading squealing in his ears. The feeling is too familiar of late. Victor, spent and boneless, keeps snoring beside him. They always have had a tendency to fuck each other to sleep when they had the time to do it properly and from the whistle of Vee’s deviated septum, Sherlock was more than sufficient.

Sighing and sober, Sherlock settles back into his pillow -- _there it is again!_

It’s faint but it’s there. He strains to hear it. It’s shrill and very far away but undeniable.

Somewhere, John is screaming. _Psychoacoustics, the study of human sound the sounds that humans make and their meanings_ _ **help him**_ _, the speed of sound depends on the mediums waves must pass through and change with the ambient conditions therein_ _ **he’s all alone**_ _, where are you John_ _ **I hear you**_ _, weather atmospheric pressure state of origin,_ _ **what is it**_ _stop screaming, the limits of hearing in homosapiens is not definite, where are you? the loudest human scream is 129 decibels where are you_ _ **John, I hear you**_ _, I hear you_

It takes a few moments for Sherlock to realise he’s outside and walking, practically jogging. It takes him even longer to realise where he’s going at such a pace. North and slightly east. He’s faster than the buses, than the Tube, than a taxi. Weaving around shoppers and mothers and businessmen and sodding _pedestrians_ , he runs following the growing blare of John’s cries, his coat flowing behind him.

When he sees the red awning of Speedy’s Café two miles later, he can no longer hear the heaving of his own breath or the pound of his flat-soled shoes on the pavement. It’s John-- only John.

 

* * *

 

 

> To: [MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk](mailto:MHolmes@Holmes.co.uk)
> 
> Subject: CODE BLACK
> 
> He was here last night and now he’s gone. No contact since. Phone off. CCTV lost him around Marble Arch near known supplier. No reported activity at Baker Street. Suggest mobilisation.
> 
> T

* * *

 

 

> To: <<SECURE LINK>>
> 
> Subject: Re: CODE BLACK
> 
> Really cannot be bothered with this now, Agent. Am cleaning up another of his messes. He’s only been gone 6 hours. Judging by the marks you undoubtedly saw paired with his behaviour last night, where might you deduce he is? You have resources -- use them.
> 
> I am trying to salvage a career.
> 
> MH

* * *

 

The heavy black door of 221 clangs shut behind him and like he’s walked into a tomb, silence. Sherlock roughly scrubs his hands through his hair now slightly wet with sweat. He tries to breathe quietly. Mrs Hudson is in Brighton for some reason or other he can’t recall, and the stench of Mycroft isn’t lingering in the stairwell, so he is alone.

Or.

“John?” Sherlock hisses into the dark. He starts up the steps, one at a time, climbing, climbing. “John, are you here?” The door to the sitting room of flat B creaks and groans like a warning when he pushes it open.

27 paintings covered and ready for the vans plus the weak lamp in the corner are all that greet him.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock whips around. No-one. There’s no-one. But someone, no, John just called his name. “John? I can hear you, where are you?”

“Sherlock, where --?” The phrase in a remembered voice sails past his ear and out the door behind him.

Sherlock flies down and down the steps, past Mrs Hudson’s and finds himself face to face with the unlocked door of 221C.

Giving this place a proper name like ‘Flat C’ is a bit generous as it’s basically an uninhabitable supply closet with its squat little windows and the poorest lighting of any basement flat Sherlock has ever known. But know it he does, so he slips inside, moving through the darkness of the not-yet-dawn until he’s standing in the middle of what would be the sitting room. If anyone were actually that desperate.

John screams.

The sound drives Sherlock to his knees, his hands instinctively covering his ears and tears springing to his eyes. It stings. It’s louder and longer than it was even in Afghanistan. Sherlock’s shoulder throbs like it has been impaled, pressing every last bit of air from his lungs, and Sherlock writhes to the ground, the cheap carpet scratching against his cheek. He crawls to the door and pulls himself up gripping the knob with his shaking fingers and taking deep, gasping breaths.

It’s just pain. Pain is temporary, pain is temporary _caused by intense damaging stimuli to the nerve receptors_ _ **get out of here**_ _and interpreted by the brain to withdraw the body from dangerous situations, get out_ _ **get out**_ _classified by specific characteristics thermal mechanical chemical, just a little_ _ **you need it**_ _a wall it’s a wall six eight six rouge primaire red red redder, not scarlet, not crimson,_ _ **blood red**_ _, 686 rouge primaire primary red, primary John is primary_ _ **go go go**_ _, red_

It doesn’t stop.

“Sherlock!!” echoes through him.

Sherlock stumbles back up the stairs, staggers into his bedroom, his shoulders and elbows meeting with the walls and the door frames all the way. Sweat drips from his temples and down his open collar. He gasps for breath, his ears vibrating with the enduring noise. John screams and screams. Sherlock can make out his name every other one or so.

His hands keep shaking but he needs them to work. The left is much weaker than the right due to the deepening hole in his shoulder. Sherlock can’t look, he knows what it looks like, the bone and veins and the blood. Pitching socks from the drawer, his index in complete disarray, he moves as fast as he can. The false bottom is no match for him.

“Stop it, John!” he shouts. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! John, please!” It’s a chant, “Stop it, John, stop it” breathy and gasping, and Sherlock drops cracking his knees on the floor of his bedroom. His case of supplies falls open before him. The vials twinkle at him like stars in the countryside, bright and promising.

He takes off his coat, wadding it up behind him. Imported cloth tears when he wrenches up the sleeve of his white shirt too far past his elbow. “John, shhh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, shhhh I’m sorry.”

“Sherlock, _no!_ ”

He shakes his head hard. This part is always difficult one-handed, but Sherlock manages. The yellow rubber tubing tightens and the veins appear, abused but ready for more, such good little soldiers. Sherlock holds the wrapper in his teeth and tears it open, the syringe smiling up at him from where it lands the floor. He loads it full of his own special blend, the blend to make John quiet and placid, to make John stop screaming, to make John stop dying -- skin breaks.

With the first push, the shoulder pain fades, sinew and bone rearranging back into their original, uninjured forms. And when the plunger is all the way down, the screaming stops too.

Sherlock flops down on his back, his chest still heaving, but slowing, and stares at the ceiling. His ears strain at the silence. Nothing save his own breathing. He takes his pulse. It’s slowing too. Odd for an amphetamine, but what luck that Sherlock is like no one else.

Calm enough now, Sherlock sits up and puts his case back to rights, syringes, vials, tubing, and closes the box. He pockets a bag of white powder. _Not even enough for a proper high, just enough, just enough, it’ll be enough._

“Bit not good,” he hears like a whisper on the wind.

“What?” Sherlock replies. “John?” Sherlock scrambles to his feet as his heart picks back up. He sniffs the air and as if his nose were buried in blonde hair, _John_. He follows it through the flat. “John, what is it?” he calls. His toe catches on the corner of one of his larger pieces.

He knows what’s beneath the brown paper wrapping. Ripping it open, John’s wry smile flashes back at him. Sherlock’s heart clenches. “Where are you?” he asks the painting, his voice so quiet it’s barely aloud. Another breeze wafts across his face. Fresh blood and sand and skin. _John._

Sherlock rubs his hands over his face. “For god’s sake, John, stop this! What is it?!” he finally yells.

Spinning slowly in place, Sherlock looks at his work. And there it is as obvious as it can be. He knows. He knows that every single one of them down to the molecular structure of their layers of colours is wrong.

Those aren’t John. Not _his_ John. He has to do them over -- he can, he _will_ do them better, do them right. For John. He deserves it. Then he’ll know, he’ll see. They’ll all see. They will, they _have to._

Flying down the stairs again, shedding clothing as he goes, Sherlock bursts into 221C flipping on the feeble lights. He pulls blank canvases from their storage spots against the hallway, propping them one after the other, against every wall until he is surrounded by them in the otherwise empty sitting room.

He finds a bucket and pigment and oil and a trowel -- perfect. Sherlock steps out of his trousers and pants.

The small bag of powder from his pocket quickly disappears through various avenues, the last of it leaving Sherlock rubbing at his gums as he kneels naked on the floor to mix the paint. _755 noir d’ivoire, ivory black but really ebony, bone char made from animal bones heated to 500 C, dark dark charcoal bone charcoal it’s all I need, the shadows John, you shine the light through them,_ _ **so much light**_ _I’ll show you, I can do better, you’re right,_ _ **you’re so right**_ _I’m positive you’re negative_ _ **you’re everything**_ _I’m not, you’re the bones and I’m the muscle I’ll show them, I can,_ _ **black and white**_ _black and white it can’t get any plainer_

Sherlock loads paint onto an old palette in huge, heavy scoops. He stands before a canvas taller than he is, gleaming white in the weak overhead light. His fingers run through the dollops on his palate and push paint into the canvas in bold parallel lines. Scraping along, his hands go up and down, up and down, paint collecting under his nails. He works fast, so fast, not like usual, not like his work at all.

This is rudimentary and unrefined, basic and easily overlooked but just as dangerous. Just as beautiful.

This is John Watson.

Sherlock leans his forehead in close to the ear he’s just drawn. He nuzzles it. “Are you mad at me?” he murmurs. “Don’t be mad at me.” Dropping the palette, he cups both hands around his mouth, whispering, “Just tell me, John. Tell me.” He waits for an answer for three seconds.

“Tell me what you want me to be!” _I’ll be it, I’ll be it whatever you want, I’ll stop painting, I’ll paint every day, just tell me don’t leave me you can’t you can’t_

Turning abruptly, he scoops paint into his hands and starts another canvas and another and another working his way around the room. He keeps moving, always moving.

The painting is secondary. Sherlock leans close and smells John, he holds his hand, he stands hip to torso and strokes John’s cheeks. He paints: thick swipes of black across white, blots that transform into shapes and outlines and faces and bodies.

“Where are you, where are you, _where are you?!_ ” Sherlock screams and clutches his own face breathing in and out harshly. His breath catches, keeps catching. “Come back, come back, I’m sorry, _come back, I’m so sorry_ ,” Sherlock chokes through embarrassing sobs. His hair tangles around his own fingers and he pulls, springing more tears to his eyes until they spill over.

This is cruel and John was never cruel, he couldn’t be. The army doctor, the civilian soldier, the killer healer, the villain and the hero -- cruelty was never a part of it. Sherlock opens his eyes. They sting horribly and blur even as he wipes them clear, but they make out a familiar shape at the edge of the room.

John.

He’s dressed so warmly, a blue gingham button-down under a jumper under his black shooting jacket from the first time Sherlock had ever laid eyes on him. Sherlock blinks hard. He peers and John peers back -- does John have a moustache? No, just a trick of the lighting. John’s upper lip is bare and stiff and straight, no hint of the mischievous, no hint of the Northerner with the easy smile.

John looks wrong. He doesn’t look amazed or fascinated. He looks angry. No, not angry -- blank. Sherlock’s stomach turns.

“John--,” Sherlock’s voice cracks on the one-syllable word that sums up his life. “I did it wrong. I’m so sorry.” John only shrugs his shoulders and crosses his arms. He looks impervious, like his coat is made of slate and spikes.

“I’m fixing it, John. I’m fixing them, look!” Sherlock gestures around the room.

“Why?”

Simultaneously, Sherlock’s blood stops flowing and every hair on Sherlock’s body stands on end. John walks toward him very slowly. Sherlock can’t move. His eyes are locked into John’s who stands above him now, arms still interlocked like a fuming headmaster.

“I love you,” Sherlock sniffs softly.

“What?” scoffs John. His eyebrows dent inwards.

“I have never been more in love with anyone.” It’s the truest thing he’s ever said and it sends waves of opposite emotions rushing through him like a vortex.

“You’ve never even met me, Sherlock,” John says frowning. “You don’t know me.”

“You’re _all_ I know.” John traces his bottom lip with two of his fingers. It shouldn’t feel like being punched, Sherlock knows, but he’s having trouble differentiating sensations just now. John’s face deflates, goes soft and forgiving.

“You know _their_ version of me, don’t you see?” John kneels down and takes Sherlock’s hands in his own. They are covered in black paint, but John’s skin doesn’t pick it up.

“Sherlock, I’m not real.”

“What’s that mean?” Sherlock is asking about their hands, but John keeps talking and laces their hands together. His still remain perfectly small and weathered and clean. Sherlock tenses.

“It means you are a marvel, a genius. You succeeded. You created me perfectly,” John smiles up at Sherlock. Sherlock smiles back but it falls as John’s face recedes into pity. “But I’m not real. I’m not me.” He takes a breath.

“I’m _you_ , Sherlock. You’ve fallen in love with yourself.”

Sherlock tries to jerk away but John holds him still. “I can’t be! I hate me! You -- you’re everything that’s not me! You’re good and kind and noble and right --”

John stares at him unblinking. _Oh 318 bleu de Prusse, but filmy opaque watery, no, that’s projection classic projection, he’s not sad that’s you not him,_ _ **you not him, look**_ _look at him, he’s there but not here, he’s not here_ _ **he never was**_ _, you don’t know him, he’s in you, John Watson’s eyes are blue and they’re not here he’s not here_ _ **he’s not here**_ _he’s right there_ John shakes his head.

“I’m not here.”

Sherlock throws down John’s hands and grabs his face, pulls him in, kisses _him for all that he is, for all that he’s not, true love’s kiss, that’s how this works, it will bring John back, remember it will wake John up, come back John I’m here, come back, this works, it has to it has to._

“Please love me back,” Sherlock presses the words into John’s lips, his cheeks, his forehead. “You’re my soulmate, I know you are. Please love me back.”

His voice is unimpeded by Sherlock’s attention. “I can’t. I _am_ you.”

“I can’t be alone. Please. Don’t leave me alone. I need you. John, please. _Please_ , I need you,” Sherlock rains kisses against his eyelids, his ears, the little curve of his perfect nose.

“No, you don’t,” John replies and backs away. He lifts Sherlock’s left elbow, the one with all the marks, and raises it to his lips. The kiss burns down and down, through to the veins and the chemicals in his blood. It’s nauseating and Sherlock endures it until he can’t help but cry out.

John stands up and gazes down at him. “You never needed me.” With every blink, he’s further away and Sherlock can’t get up to follow. He tries, but his feet are like anvils on the ocean floor.

“Why are you doing this?” Sherlock stares wide-eyed. “Don’t do this. Don’t leave me, John.”

He blinks.

They are back in 221B, Sherlock in his grey pyjamas and blue robe and John in his uniform like a khaki bruise. His helmet makes him look shorter. Blood pours easily from the wide open wound through his shoulder. John hitches up his rifle and does an about face.

“I was never here.”

 

* * *

 

Six hours after he sends an email to the ever-useless Mycroft and twelve hours since Sherlock fucked his brains out and called him the name of a dead army doctor, Victor reaches another dead end. He thanks his informant with the last of his emergency fifties and turns back down another putrid alley.

Sherlock has not frequented any of his better-known haunts (‘haven’t seen him in days, mate, not since he last topped up’) nor any of the lesser-known (‘he’s the tall one, with the curly hair, yeah?’). He only has one choice: go to Baker Street and wait.

On his walk there, Victor tries to recall the exact moment he knew something was awry. Surely he’s not as unobservant, as stupid as that. Again. Surely he -- _of all people_ \-- would notice Sherlock going off the rails again. _Face it, Trevor, there’s your answer. You don’t deserve him if you didn’t see it._

Victor lights another cigarette from the pack Sherlock left on the bureau and keeps walking west, the mid-day sun shining bright in the clearest sky in months, like nothing could possibly go wrong today. Victor hopes, oh how he hopes that it’s true.

“Thank you, Mrs Turner, I’ll return it in two shakes. I just forgot mine and have to check on Sherlock’s…puppy,” Victor lies with his brightest smile.

“Oh dear, I knew _something_ was making all that noise last night!” replies Mrs Turner handing over the key. “How scared the poor thing must have been, crying and crying all night long. Goodness me.” Victor tries not to change his face as his mind starts to race and skin starts to itch.

“Oh I’m sure he’ll be fine, thanks again,” he says heading back to 221. Stepping through the door, Victor makes himself calm by pausing to take off his scarf and coat, draping them over the banister as usual. “Sherlock?” he calls. It’s ludicrous to expect a response, but his heart doesn’t seem to want to think rationally.

He’s probably asleep, Victor thinks as he climbs the stairs. Sherlock’s cocaine crashes should be counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. He remembers many a time where he ended up mopping Sherlock’s brow with a cool cloth and humming Kurt Cobain or Wagner or fucking jingles off the telly just to get Sherlock over the hump and back to the land of the living. He sighs.

The flat is cold, but that’s normal. Sherlock’s exhibition is wrapped and ready to go to the gallery save one piece, a large one of Watson’s strange smiling face. Victor feels the ripped paper between his fingers. It’s obvious it was intentional. And forceful. “Sherlock, c’mon!” he yells again.

He sighs again, deeper this time and his nostrils fill with that smell, that _I’m working_ smell. Victor looks at the painting of the face. He touches his finger to it. Completely dry. He sniffs the air.

Following his nose, he arrives at the cracked open door of Unit C. Above the mould and the damp swirls the distinct scent of turpentine, linseed oil, paint. The door scrapes against the uneven floorboards as he pushes through. Turning a sharp corner, Victor can see slivers of canvas with various shades of black and grey marks and finally he sees a familiar foot. “Sherlock, goddamnit, I thought you were--”

And then he can’t speak.

Victor’s body takes over, kneeling in a puddle of room-temperature blood next to where Sherlock’s body has gone cold.

It’s not impossible just improbable.

It is improbably possible that he is speaking. It is improbably possible that he’s saying ridiculous things like “what did you do?” and “no, god, love, no” and “you stupid fucking bastard” over and over. It is improbably possible that he’s screaming those phrases. It is improbably possible that he is hysterical. And it is improbably possible someone heard him because he is suddenly surrounded by noise and light and people trying to pry his hands from their grip around Sherlock’s upper arms.

Sherlock is covered in paint, his face, his hair, his hands, and his thighs -- black everywhere. Paint gums his eyelashes together. Swaths of pale skin peek through sparingly especially on his shoulder where the broken piece of palette severed his axillary artery and on his sunken cheeks where trails entwine, the skin cleaned with his dried tears.

In the back of the van headed to Bart’s, Victor sits next to him, bag unzipped, and pets his hair. And pets his hair. It’s still wet. He pets his hair.

**# # # #**

The wound in Sherlock’s shoulder paired with the frankly horrendous amount of drugs in his system lead everyone including Dr Molly Lestrade to the agonising conclusion that this is obviously what Sherlock had wanted. And so, like he did whenever he wanted something bad enough, he had gone out and gotten it. Consequences be damned. The world be damned. Let it all burn.

Everyone believes it.

Everyone but Victor.

A while later, after the police, after the funeral, after the unbelievable opening of PAINTINGS III (which Victor can’t bear to attend), Victor ends his rebound relationship with the adorable baker from Hampstead that he knew would never go anywhere and finally reads the file on Dr John Hamish Watson, RAMC.

He reads. And he reads. And he reads.

Commitment. Loyalty. Valour. Humility. Selflessness. Humour. Intelligence. Skill. Bravery and stupidity in equal parts. And this is just from the things that get reported and written down. If he were to call the people in these reports, he knows they’d agree with every word. John Watson was a fierce friend, a loyal subject, and just in the wrong place at the wrong goddamn time.

He closes his eyes and thinks about Sherlock. First one leg goes to sleep so he recrosses them in the Silent Room of the Diogenes Club. He refills his scotch. He recrosses his legs again. He thinks for a very long time.

Finally, Victor reaches the following conclusions:

One: Soulmates exist.

Two: God is cruel.

That’s all.

 

* * *

 

_Sherlock & The Soldier_

 

“As you can see, they are unique to any of his other works,” Mycroft Holmes, brother and former manager of the late, great Sherlock Holmes (1977—2013) says steadily while leaning on an umbrella, no hint that what he has just said could be classified as the understatement of the last few centuries, not just this one. The retrospective installation at the new Holmes Gallery in Marylebone is unlike any of the works the public has come to expect from Sherlock Holmes. Once touted as the modern Velázquez (or da Vinci, though this particular analogy rings false as the only reason da Vinci is seen as “better” is that he happened to be born earlier), his current (and devastatingly last) pieces, the intriguingly titled THE EAST WIND (“I used to tell him a story, how the East Wind sweeps in and plucks up the unworthy. No-one escapes the East Wind.”), show a side of Holmes that this writer was unsure existed.

 

Just nine paintings comprise the entirety of the exhibition, all generously-sized stark white canvas with graduations of black and grey clearly painted not with brushes, but with Holmes’ own fingers and body parts (in several pieces, strands of his hair can be seen trapped in the drying oils). “These are the last of my brother,” explains the elder Holmes. “They are still portraits, but these,” he pauses, a strange look passing through his small eyes, “These paintings show what none of the others do. Sherlock’s previous work showed how he saw his subjects -- these show how he sees, _saw_ himself.”

 

And clearly, Sherlock saw himself with John Watson.

 

Captain Watson, the subject of Holmes’ previous PAINTINGS III, makes several reappearances here. (Harriet Watson, sister and original commissioner of the PAINTINGS III politely declined comment on the new exhibition from her home in London, Ontario.) The leading piece shows Holmes and Watson staring deeply into each other, their eyes boring holes in the other. Another is Watson’s face like granite with his mouth set in a disapproving line and eerie, empty eyes. Another, which may have had more impact in the preceding exhibit, is Watson laid out on a table, an unbelievable wound punched through his shoulder (accurate to how Watson died in Kandahar) that is monstrous even in greyscale.

 

But perhaps the most affecting pieces are the self-portraits: Holmes nude and facing us, his face a twist of grief as he holds Watson against himself, Watson’s back perfectly muscled save the giant hole in the shoulder; Holmes sitting cross-legged, covering his face, his trademark curls upset into painful spirals like razor wire; and finally Holmes holding another Holmes by the throat.

 

When I tell Holmes Senior that the exhibition feels like the last piece, like it has me by the throat, he smiles knowingly. “Sherlock would be pleased,” he muses. And what else would Sherlock think of this show? He quiets, glancing around the gallery with its spotless windows and comfy chairs. “He loved this bit of London. Especially the park. I think he would be _content_ that they have a home here. Together. And together they will live forever.”

 

They?

 

“Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.”

 

_THE EAST WIND and Sherlock Holmes’ PAINTINGS III are permanent installations at The Holmes Gallery, Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. No booking necessary._

 

_K. Reilly, The Guardian_

* * *

 

 

THE END

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [THE EAST WIND II & IIII](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957854) by [dee-light (DraloreShimare)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DraloreShimare/pseuds/dee-light)




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